Friday, January 12, 2007
Another Week-Another Ice Storm
Battening Down the Hatches
STL is in for a second major ice storm; we have one at the beginning of December that left almost 500,000 homes without electricity and heat! So, there's no milk, gas, or rock salt to be found within a 50-mile radius! JK. Seriously, do keep our fair metropolis in your prayers this weekend; these ice storms can get pretty nasty pretty quickly.
I'm not sure any 90/9 readers are weather fanatics, but, coming from a farming state (Nebraska), weather is really a life-or-death (or should we say, "money-or-bankruptcy") deal. Many stories I heard growing up were somehow weather-related! Nebraska is the only place I've heard (serious) church prayer requests for rain!
My grandfather has farmed along the Republican River in south central Nebraska since he was 16 (he's now 80 and still at it!); all that time, he's kept a weather journal (what "blogs" used to be called when people still used pen and paper (will the Internet be the death of handwriting?Hmmm). Anyway, when some meterological anomaly occurs (such as 70 in New York and freezing in Cali like it was this past week or so), I call Grandpa. And no matter what I say-"Hey, Grandpa, it rained chicken feathers," he'll always say, "Yeah, same thing happened once here in '62; only that time it was turkey feathers!" Funny thing about that wierd Cali weather is, I remember him telling me a story about a freak cold wave that hit there in January, I believe (he lived in the Burbank area for a short time); none of the cars had antifreeze, so they would get on the interstate, turn north into the wind, and the engine would freeze up.
Finally Found
Time got away from me today, I wasn't able to do my daily Internet "news cruise" (NYTimes, MSN, Slate, etc), but I did listen briefly to the radio (Ok, ok, I'm still a techno-Neanderthal in some ways), just enough to catch a breaking story. About three days ago, a 13-year old boy named Ben Ownby disappeared on his way home from school; they've been playing this sound-byte of the dad pleading with the kidnapper to bring his son home safe over and over and over-really tears you up to hear it
Over 500 tips were phoned in, and they finally found him today! However, that's not the pick-your-jaw-up part of the story; they found another kid, Shawn Hornbeck, an 11-year old who had been kidnapped over four years ago!!! Wow! How would a parent process that? I keep thinking of the father's line from Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son: "My son who was dead is alive again!" Four years; he's 15 now! He left a 6th-grader and comes back a highschooler! What makes it even more difficult is that he is (obviously, since he was kept alive and healthy) the victim of severe "abuse", if you catch my drift. I simply can't imagine, as a parent, trying to help your child recover from that kind of horrible situation.What would say? What could you say? "It'll be OK"? "Glad you're home"? "What's wrong with you?! Why didn't you try to escape"?
I can't help but see the hand of God in this recovery; it's things like this-there must be a God; how else could you make sense out of a world where miracles (Shawn Hornbeck) and potential disasters (coming ice storms) all happen on a Friday?
Have a safe, happy, God-filled weekend!
Questions, comments, concerns? Please feel free to E-mail me!
STL is in for a second major ice storm; we have one at the beginning of December that left almost 500,000 homes without electricity and heat! So, there's no milk, gas, or rock salt to be found within a 50-mile radius! JK. Seriously, do keep our fair metropolis in your prayers this weekend; these ice storms can get pretty nasty pretty quickly.
I'm not sure any 90/9 readers are weather fanatics, but, coming from a farming state (Nebraska), weather is really a life-or-death (or should we say, "money-or-bankruptcy") deal. Many stories I heard growing up were somehow weather-related! Nebraska is the only place I've heard (serious) church prayer requests for rain!
My grandfather has farmed along the Republican River in south central Nebraska since he was 16 (he's now 80 and still at it!); all that time, he's kept a weather journal (what "blogs" used to be called when people still used pen and paper (will the Internet be the death of handwriting?Hmmm). Anyway, when some meterological anomaly occurs (such as 70 in New York and freezing in Cali like it was this past week or so), I call Grandpa. And no matter what I say-"Hey, Grandpa, it rained chicken feathers," he'll always say, "Yeah, same thing happened once here in '62; only that time it was turkey feathers!" Funny thing about that wierd Cali weather is, I remember him telling me a story about a freak cold wave that hit there in January, I believe (he lived in the Burbank area for a short time); none of the cars had antifreeze, so they would get on the interstate, turn north into the wind, and the engine would freeze up.
Finally Found
Time got away from me today, I wasn't able to do my daily Internet "news cruise" (NYTimes, MSN, Slate, etc), but I did listen briefly to the radio (Ok, ok, I'm still a techno-Neanderthal in some ways), just enough to catch a breaking story. About three days ago, a 13-year old boy named Ben Ownby disappeared on his way home from school; they've been playing this sound-byte of the dad pleading with the kidnapper to bring his son home safe over and over and over-really tears you up to hear it
Over 500 tips were phoned in, and they finally found him today! However, that's not the pick-your-jaw-up part of the story; they found another kid, Shawn Hornbeck, an 11-year old who had been kidnapped over four years ago!!! Wow! How would a parent process that? I keep thinking of the father's line from Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son: "My son who was dead is alive again!" Four years; he's 15 now! He left a 6th-grader and comes back a highschooler! What makes it even more difficult is that he is (obviously, since he was kept alive and healthy) the victim of severe "abuse", if you catch my drift. I simply can't imagine, as a parent, trying to help your child recover from that kind of horrible situation.What would say? What could you say? "It'll be OK"? "Glad you're home"? "What's wrong with you?! Why didn't you try to escape"?
I can't help but see the hand of God in this recovery; it's things like this-there must be a God; how else could you make sense out of a world where miracles (Shawn Hornbeck) and potential disasters (coming ice storms) all happen on a Friday?
Have a safe, happy, God-filled weekend!
Questions, comments, concerns? Please feel free to E-mail me!
# posted by Luke @ 8:25 PM 
