For daily spiritual sustenance, the Psalms are my One A Day vitamins. At a pace of one a day for 150 days (roughly five months), allowing for days when I don’t ponder one because of reflecting on a gem someone else sent me or missing my morning time altogether, I read through the Psalms twice a year.

 In my latest iteration, I reached Psalm 57 the day after Hurricane Helene made landfall. Its opening petition:

Be merciful to me, O God; be merciful to me,
    for in you my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
    until the destroying storms pass by. (Psalm 57:1)

I was in Atlanta at the fall Bethany Fellows retreat the night the destroying storm passed. The greatest damage was done northeast of Atlanta in western North Carolina – Asheville and Black Mountain – home to Christmount and Montreat, the Disciples of Christ and Presbyterian national conference centers. Both have been foundational in Jennie and my journeys of faith. Both are home to family and friends.

After reading the psalm, I read Facebook posts from Christmount and Montreat as well as from Week of Compassion, our Disciples of Christ Relief and Development ministry.

Christmount

Everyone here is ok. Everything else is a mess. We covet your prayers and will need your help when the time comes to rebuild… We will reach out with updates as we are able.

Montreat

Lake Susan and Flat Creek swelled to historic levels following heavy rainfall brought on by Hurricane Helene. High water levels caused catastrophic flooding throughout the town of Montreat. In addition, high winds brought down trees and power lines, contributing to widespread outages of power and water… Everyone onsite is safe. Conference center buildings and structures, including the Lake Susan Dam, remain intact.

Week of Compassion

Hurricane Helene made landfall with massive 140 mph winds and 20ft storm surge as predicted. Impact has been widespread and damage assessments are ongoing across the southeast U.S. Week of Compassion is in contact with Regional and ecumenical leaders, supporting regional causes and already strategizing what will surely be a long-term recovery. Gifts to WeekOfCompassion.org/give, marked ‘Hurricane 2024,’ will be directed to this response.

My check is in the mail (or the online giving portal, as the case may be).

Having lived in Hurricane Alley on the NC coast during the 1990s while serving First Christian, Wilmington, I’ve experienced hurricanes. Hugo made landfall north of Charleston, SC, the year our family arrived in Wilmington (1989). In ensuing years, Bertha (1996), Fran (1996), and Bonnie (1998) came a-callin’.

The first two questions that proceed from people’s mouths after a hurricane are 1) Are you all right? and 2) Do you have power?  Power as in electricity, which after hurricanes we were without for anywhere from hours to days to weeks.

Life is not good without power. No power, no lights. No power, no water (we had a well). No power, no stove. No power, no refrigeration. No power, no hot water heater. No power, no air conditioning. All of which adds up to no power, no patience. Orneriness, short tempers, and ‘hot and bothered’ were the order of the day. In sum: No power, no good.

Laura, our youngest, was not quite four years old when Fran blew through. She’d go through the house, reach up, turn on a light switch, and when nothing happened she’d announce, “We don’t have the power (pronounced the pow-uh).”

One day while we were still without power, we drove to the church. Once inside, Laura reached up, flipped the switch, and voila – the lights came on! Her eyes lit up, her jaw dropped open, and a huge grin broke out on her face. She tossed her arms in the air and shouted, “Mama, Daddy, the church has the pow-uh!”

Little did little Laura know, but power is a biblical word. It appears 88 times in the New Testament. The Book of Acts begins with Jesus promising his disciples, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8) In Greek, the original language of the New Testament, the word translated power/pow-uh is δυναμιν (dynamin) from which we get our word dynamite. Jesus promised his disciples he’d leave them some dynamite: the power of the Holy Spirit.    

Now, there are a lot of people who'd get a good laugh out of my saying churches are powered by dynamite. I can hear some smart aleck say, Pardon me, Preacher, but if you asked me to come up with one word to describe my experience of church, dynamite wouldn’t make the top ten. Words that mean the opposite of dynamite would be there instead – words that connote more fizzle than sizzle. Know what I mean? 

I do. I understand. I keep track of the reasons people don’t go to church or quit going to church. Some of the reasons I’ve heard over and over include:

• Hypocrisy. Somebody says, They call themselves Christians! They’ll know we are Christians by our love? They sing the song, but they don’t do the deed. They talked the talk but they didn't walk the walk, so I walked.  Hypocrisy is a turn-off.   

• So is wrathful religion. You know: judgmental, guilt-inducing, fear-mongering religion. Painting God as a scowling bad cop in the sky who's always trying to catch us doing or thinking something wrong so God can pounce and punish. The Christian life as a litany of Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Wrathful religion is a turn-off.     

• Then there’s boredom, the opposite of dynamite. Someone says, Church? B-o-o-o-oring. My college roommate used to say, “Dave, I’m going to sleep in my own bed rather than in a pew. I go to church at Bedsheet Baptist and listen to Reverend I. M. Snoozin’.” Boredom turns people away from church.

I can understand how for many people words like church and dynamite don't seem to belong in the same sentence. Which points to a serious problem: Jesus promised power (dynamite!) to his followers, but all too many people's experience of church is anything but dynamic.

What happened? Why is it that what Jesus promised isn’t many people’s experience of the Christian faith? Where’s the power? Since my retirement two years ago, Jennie and I have visited upwards of forty churches of all sizes and denominations. The power is on in some of those churches. It is flickering in others. It is absent in many. I hear my daughter sigh, “They don’t have the pow-uh.”

Back to Psalm 57. What begins in verse one with the psalmist hunkering down until “the destroying storms pass” pivots in verse eight with a (pow-uh full) two exclamation mark wake up call: “Awake, my soul! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn.

Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, says all of us ought to come to worship with heightened expectations. She wrote, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?... We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” (Teaching a Stone to Talk. Harper and Row. 1982.)

I’m praying for power to be restored in the places ravaged by Hurricane Helene. Praying, too, for the empowerment of people responding to nature’s devastation with humanity’s rock-ribbed, restorative compassion. [My brother let me know our cousin and her husband quietly arranged for hot meals to be delivered to the reeling population and recovery workers of the hard-hit Florida barrier island near where they live. Five hundred people came and were fed. Theirs are two wide awake souls, for sure.  More power to them!]

I’m also praying for power to be restored to churches and their pastors. Lord knows many destroying storms have passed by these past four years and taken their toll! I’m praying for power from on high to awaken churches, turn them on and turn them into people of integrity rather than hypocrites, merciful and gracious people rather than purveyors of wrathful religion, vital, vibrant, and dynamic souls rather than bores.

Come, Holy Spirit, come. May it be said of each of the forty churches Jennie and I have visited in our retirement and the ones we’ve actively served, “Mama, Daddy, that church has the pow-uh!