麻豆社

A reflection and prayer to start the day with Canon Simon Doogan.

Good morning.

The flash flooding in Valencia last November in which more than 230 people lost their lives, was like nothing I鈥檇 ever seen before. Most eye-popping, were the images of cars swept onto streets on top of each other, like so many flattened and discarded drinks cans. It turns out, Valencia has suffered disastrous floods since the fourteenth century. In fact, when 81 people died in 1957, authorities reacted by diverting an entire river, the T煤ria three kilometres from its original source.

Engineers around the world will be kept busy if such drastic measures continue to be called-for, though it seems not every river will allow itself to be tamed. Unprecedented El Ni帽o rains in Kenya last year claimed 150 lives and left 400,000 homeless. In that situation and to pre-empt further flooding, the government felt it had no choice but to demolish a large number of family homes along the Mathare riverbank near Nairobi.

And that鈥檚 the thing about the nightmare of violently rising water which recurs so often in the Bible whether physical or figurative,

Then the waters would have engulfed us, states a breathless Psalm 124,
The stream would have swept over our soul.

Yet God鈥檚 assurance isn鈥檛 a diversion or rerouting of the torrent; it鈥檚 support and bolstering to stand firm in the face of it.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, spurs on Isaiah,
And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.

Lord whatever is threatening to sweep us off our feet, stand with us.
And where water carves its natural course and extreme weather turns that process sudden and deadly, we pray for those who lie helpless in its path. Amen