One Year Later

 

 

 

It has been one year since I woke up to this Facebook post from my friend who lives in Nepal.

” It was pretty scary.  We were all huddled together.  I was praying,  “Jesus you are our rock.  Our strong tower.  Ever present help in times of trouble.  ” and thinking of what I wanted the last words I said to my children to be as I held them under my body. Protect Clara Jesus, she is my favorite thing.  Joah, he’s my favorite thing.  Protect them God.  It was not a short quake, but a LONG time  of swaying back and forth as glass vases and frames shattered on the floor around us.  Scary.”

 

I will never forget that moment. I turned on the news and was heartbroken to see my people– the people in a country I had poured my heart and life into, Nepal, devastated by a 7.9 earthquake which killed close to 10,000 people ( and really they had no way to get an accurate count of the death toll).

We had always heard this earthquake was coming. When I was in Nepal we had “earthquake drill” practices.  We had earthquake survival boxes.  We tried to prepare for when the earth would start shaking.

Nothing can really prepare you for those moments when the earth starts shaking.

Two weeks after the quake hit, I was able to go to my beloved Nepal.  To walk the streets. To see the devastation myself.

Nothing could have prepared me for these moments.  The way I saw suffering like I never had.  The way the earth shaking changed everything.

The terror in the eyes I met.

These were hard moments. Heartbreaking moments.  Scary moments as the earth continued to shake.   Each aftershock brought new terror.  New worries.  New wonderings.

But I learned something HUGE while there.

There is always hope beneath the rubble.

We were in a village very close to the epicenter of  the quake.  This village had been nearly flattened by both the earthshaking and the landslides that resulted.  Nothing could have prepared my heart for the suffering I saw when I rounded that holy hill.

I got out of our jeep that had bounced along roads  full of destruction.  My body was exhausted and my heart heavy.   We topped the hill and came upon a church that had pancaked during the earthquake. They had been having service, praising Jesus one minute and crying out to him the next.

Eight bodies were still buried inside this rubble.

The survivors were all huddled around a small tin structure outside, waiting for us to bring them hope.

Where is the hope here?

I was literally brought to my knees as I asked Jesus this question.

And then He answered.  I looked and saw the cross among the rubble.

The cross that had stood at the top of the church now buried among the debris.

 

 

 

The cross was still there.

Jesus whispered to my heart  in that life-changing moment.

“The cross is the lifeline of hope in any rubble.”

Friends, I want to remind you of that today.  The cross is your  lifeline of hope.  No matter how much your ground is shaking.  He does not change.

Jesus stretched out His hands to hang on a cross to be a stable place for you to hang your hope.

A lifeline.

An anchor.

” We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.   Hebrews 6:19

Jesus suffered on the cross so He could be with us in our sufferings.

In our good days. In our bad days.

On our best days, on our worst days.

Emmanuel– God with us.

I am praying you are reminded today, the cross is your lifeline of hope.

Also, I have a free gift  for you today.  I write about this experience in Chapter one of my newest Book, Coming Alive at the Cross  which will be available on Amazon in May.  Today I wanted to offer you a  free download of the first chapter of Coming Alive at the Cross.

All you have to do is subscribe  to updates on the right side of blog.  Or if you already are a subscribers, simply reply to this e-mail or e-mail me at [email protected] and I will send you the PDF of the first chapter.

Ps:  Would love your prayers for what God is going to do with this book.