God's Comfort in the Midst of Despair

God s Comfort in the Midst of Despair - by Sue Smith With their beloved home ravaged by Hurricane Irene, a couple s faith is put to the test. I pushed against the back door of our house again, hard. No luck. It wouldn’t budge. The humidity from the... More

God s Comfort in the Midst of Despair - by Sue Smith With their beloved home ravaged by Hurricane Irene, a couple s faith is put to the test. I pushed against the back door of our house again, hard. No luck. It wouldn’t budge. The humidity from the flood had swollen the wood. My husband, Vince, had gone in through the front. As I waited, I told myself, Maybe it won’t be that bad. It was half hope and half prayer. Something told me, though, it was going to be bad. Real bad. Two days earlier, on August 28, we’d evacuated Schoharie, our village of 1,000 in central New York, fleeing Hurricane Irene, which had swept up the East Coast, transforming streams into raging rivers. The village was like a war zone. Shops wrecked, houses crumpled, nearly every one owned by someone we knew. Lampposts uprooted. An oil tank lay on its side. Debris everywhere. Still I hoped we’d been spared. We didn’t live in the flood plain. The Schoharie Creek, usually a gentle, flowing stream, runs Less