In Times of Tragedy: Flooding in the Texas Hill Country

I have heard so many stories about the tragic flooding in and around Hunt and Ingram, Texas, and I know many people involved or I know people who know people who are involved. I've prayed and prayed some more. Of course we want to make things all right for everyone, but that is not going to be the outcome for the time being.

In times of tragedy, I turn to the Lord in prayer, knowing he loves people, he loves his creation, he loves unconditionally and purely. I also remember this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I have quoted at numerous funerals in the past. Writing from his prison cell to Renate and Eberhard Bethge on Christmas Eve 1943, fifteen months before his own death by execution, Bonhoeffer wrote:

There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it.

At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it.

It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve—even in pain—the authentic relationship.

Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation.

But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 8, Letters and Papers from Prison

We pray, O merciful Father, for all who have been afflicted by the tragic floods in the Texas Hill Country. We entrust them to your never-failing love and care, for this life and for the life to come. We grieve the loss of life and ask you to look with pity on those whose fate is still unknown, knowing that you can do for them better things than we can pray for or imagine. Meet us in our sorrows, comfort those who grieve, and sustain us through your loving and abiding presence. All this we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.