In Biblical Proportions

By John Kubicek


Live, from Ground Zero in the News today.....

The doom and gloom abounds. Everyone here in Cedar Rapids has been affected in someway through this terrific tsunami of tragedy. Everywhere you look, there is water, including some in my very own basement floor from a window that could no longer hold back the deluge.

The only thing getting me through the moment, and that's having a chance of seeing some of the Cubs-Braves game. I'd be in bed long ago, but my electricity had gone out. And then I heard they closed the Interstate, the only way over the Cedar River.... And then I heard it was open.... And then I tried to call my daughter, only to go directly to her voicemail..... (Don't worry, she is okay!)

Isn't is strange what I saw I had in my Profile? I say I am from "Iowa (....or is this Heaven)". Welll, right now, many people in Iowa want to say, "Is this Hell?" Tornadoes of gargantuan strength (Parkersburg, F-5, the Boy Scout camp tornado that killed 4 campers in Western Iowa), horrible floods... Oh, how good it is that we aren't in the terrible throes of Winter we just went through..... (/sarcasm).

What I wrote above would be how the lame stream media would handle this story. But there is a much better story that needs to come out.

If there was EVER a time..... A GREAT time, for me to have begun posting that 40 Days of Purpose series, it was now. Not because I want any glory - I don't - because it really does all belong to the Lord... But, 40 Days? Like the 40 Days of Rain for Noah and his clan? Like the 40 Days Jesus spent here after His Resurrection before He went into the clouds?

It wasn't an accident, it wasn't coincidence that I had started sending out the 40 Days of Purpose series... maybe it was just to help me keep my sanity. But now, I realize a much bigger purpose, something that I had never thought could happen.

There may have been a time when I first started writing this today, that I may have told you what a massive repurcussion this would have on America. I could see the ripple effects, knowing that crops have been impacted, not just here in Iowa, but all over the Midwest. We all know that is happening.

But then, while waiting for youtube.com to get the above video uploaded, I had a revelation. On WMT radio, there was an interview with a representative to the Iowa State legislature, I heard something very positive. It was about how people here in Cedar Rapids have done such a fantastic job of pulling together and cooperating. There have been no deaths, Praise the Lord, so far. That is the good news. Yet, we know, what we'll be facing in this historic tragedy in the aftermath, there are affects this will have throughout all of the economy of Cedar Rapids, and ripple through Iowa, and probably the nation.

But as New York City pulled out of the aftermath of 9/11, Cedar Rapids will pull out of the Flood of 2008. It will take time, and a lot of people are going to have very difficult times. And as the hope and care for each other rippled out of NYC and the Pentagon area in 2001, it is my prayer that the hope and perseverence and the resilience of the good old Cedar Rapidians will ripple out of this area, to touch the nation. We will see.