‘ I’MGOING TO BE FINE’
Last Sunday, Hurricane Harvey HOUSTON was lashing Southeast Texas and dropping a flood of unimaginable proportions on the GreaterHouston area.
On Sunday, exhausted Houstonians, many of whom lost all their worldly possessions to Harvey’s wrath, poured into churches throughout the region.
At Christ Church Cathedral in downtownHouston, the Rev. Barkley Thompson rallied his congregation to action from the pulpit by likening the city’s tribulations with those ofMoses.
“Forty- two thousand are presently housed in shelters across this city and state. Forty people have died. Rockport was devastated. Beaumont drowned. One runs out of superlative adjectives to describe things — and then one simply runs out of the energy to speak at all,” Thompson said during his homily.
The Episcopal church enlisted attendees to volunteer to feed the homeless, provide temporary housing, help with home cleanups and host potluck dinners.
Established in 1839, Christ Church Cathedral operates The Beacon, which typically dishes out 300 lunches to homeless people, five days a week.
City officials and the Houston Coalition for the Homeless asked The Beacon to start serving three meals daily from Sunday through Sept. 15, Thompson said.
South Main Baptist Church also donated 300 pairs of shoes Friday to The Beacon so the homeless could trade in waterlogged, ruined footwear, he said.
Christ Church Cathedral has established an Uber account for parishioners who lost their vehicles to floods.
AtHoly Name Catholic Church, a predominantly African- American congregation in Baytown, Texas, many of the parishioners watched their homes flood during Hurricane Harvey. The church rectory flooded, and for days after the storm passed, the neighborhood around the church was accessible only by boat.
But Sunday, there seemed to be an agreement among the church’s leaders and members to downplay the damage.
“My house? We got flooded, but it wasn’t that bad,” said Mary Norman, 68, of Baytown. “I only got 4 inches of water inside the house. But other people inmy neighborhood had water running over their roofs.”
At the Rev. Nixon Mullah’s service Sunday, he spoke about the importance of eschewing the flashy comforts of this world and instead waking up and making the hard decision to be good.
Everyone in the church knew that Mullah’s home, in the church rectory, had been flooded. They knew he’d been cut off from his congregation, and his church accessible only by boat.
They already knew, Mullah said, so he saw no reason to remind them. Better, then, to focus on eternal love rather than these passing pains.
Lilly Auzenne’s house in Baytown was flooded last year, and it took her six months and $ 24,000 to rebuild, she said.
She moved back into her house two months before Harvey made landfall. The water seeped in first through the front door, then through the back.
“Oh, I know I’m going to be fine,” said Auzenne, 80. “I talk to God all the time.”
At Fifth Ward Church of Christ in northeast Houston, parking was so scarce for the 11: 15 a. m. service that many attendees had to park nearly a half- dozen streets away.
One of them, Helen Benjamin, 78, crossed railroad tracks near the church.
About two blocks away, smoke billowed into the air as more than a dozen people prepped a pair of large smokers.
“They’re going to feed us today,” said Benjamin, who has been displaced from her Fifth Ward home and is staying in a hotel. “God is good. We are blessed.”
During the baptism invitation, congregants sang Softly and Tenderly., “Come home, come home … Ye who are weary, come home.” Contributing: Natalie Alund, The Tennessean; Christopher Maag, The ( Bergen County, N. J.) Record; and Rick Neale, Florida Today