UNIMAGINABLE! The headline of a New Orleans newspaper fairly shrieked across the front page as hurricane Katrina came ashore with death and destruction in its wake. But was it unimaginable? No, not really. Some minds have imagined and considered and had nightmares about the probability of such disaster for many years.
More than seventy years ago, a ten-year-old child visited the great city and was taken to see the levees that held back the water from the city. Looking up, far above her head, she could see ships traveling on the water beyond the protective levees, and she added a bit to her bedtime prayer: “Please, Lord Jesus, don’t let the levees break!”
Was it just a child’s imagination? By no means! New Orleans was below sea level, sinking lower and lower over the years, and within reach of dangerous hurricane winds and the turbulent waters of the Gulf of Mexico. What a blueprint for disaster it became!
Geologists, coastal engineers, climatologists—all have discussed the dire possibilities and have published their predictions and opinions of possible hurricane damage. Little more than a year ago a national magazine published an almost exact scenario of the damage if a major hurricane struck the city. A geologist from the University of New Orleans said, “It’s not a question of if it will happen; it’s when.”
No, there was no lack of imagination!
But the sky was blue, the sunshine was warm, and it was so easy to forget care and worry and just live in the present.
The great wind of the hurricane came first, about 135-145 mph, but the strongest winds blew to the east and demolished coastal towns in Mississippi and Alabama. Citizens of New Orleans breathed a sigh of relief, congratulating themselves that “it missed us again!”
One could almost hear a voice from Rev. 9:1212One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter. (Revelation 9:12): “One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.” A listener might not hear the surging storm water in Lake Pontchartrain, but it quietly overtopped the levees and opened wide breaches in the protecting walls.
Soon the water was standing over 80% of the city. Power systems flooded, making the pumps that the city depended on shut down. Thousands of people were stranded on rooftops, in attics, or anywhere to avoid the dirty, polluted water. With inadequate shelter, there was little food or drinkable water; looting and arson soon broke out, overwhelming police and firefighters and all the forces of law and order. Chaos!
One person described it as “a disaster of Biblical proportions.” It was not that in size, but a preview of the time of the Apocalypse that is coming, not if, but when. Is it a warning for all of us, whether living in a hurricane zone or not? Absolutely! We are already hearing of “wars and rumors of wars... famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes....These are the beginning of sorrows.”
But-before the storm struck New Orleans, there were warnings: Evacuate! Get to higher ground! This is not a test; this is real! And more than a million obeyed and escaped the horrors threatening the city.
Have we had our final warning? How much longer will the road to salvation and safety be open? Tomorrow, that road may be closed. Then “how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” But today, in this one little moment of time, God still looks on humanity, “and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light” (Job 33:27-2827He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; 28He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light. (Job 33:27‑28)).