Biography

We traveled south to get to our modular home. We understood it would be demolished. But we were  not allowed to enter the area because the streets were jammed. So we headed to my in-laws. The national guard was policing the protected areas that were blocked off. Psalm 29 poetically describes the extensive destruction of the storm that departs from the city in profound silence. I would be meditating on that Psalm at peaceful night as the fierce storm had left us without electricity and there was a distinct silence. God had eliminated all of the comforts of life and made the conditions perfectly suitable for prayer and meditation. The sole comfort was God who had spoken in the historic storm.

 I was learning as a young man that when God launches a monumental event He is getting eager to bless beyond our understanding. God will turn a city upside down to bless His beloved children. I investigated stories of local people who for the first time were in such terrible conditions that they were sincerely praying. I learned in the Psalms that it is an abundant blessing of God when He turns an evil society upside down. He intentionally causes people to come together as a creative way to return the creation covenant.

 We waited for two weeks to be able to enter our house. The entire city looked like an active war zone. The fierce storm had uprooted most of the trees. Since our house was flattened, we were qualified to negotiate a loan. It was almost no interest. We mutually decided to go across the street to an exclusive neighborhood that was wood frame construction. The problem was we were competing economically with wealthy investors. But God amply secured us a man who was looking affectionately to sell his house with no stable roof to a young couple. We offered him the sum of our loan humbly trusting that God would provide money for me to rebuild. He had been offered more money by the private investor but he graciously sold us the modest house. We had paid a fraction of the cost of that house that was in a guarded neighborhood.

 I did not realize that at the time that God was generously bestowing a gift so that we gained the freedom to minister to others in the foreseeable future. Andrew was the first rare storm to cause a catastrophic disaster to the US for 20 years so the private insurance company was handing out 50 thousand dollar checks to local homeowners. Most of the local people sold the damaged house and evacuated the local area.

 After we had purchased the private house, we had left the local church where we were married and faithfully attended a reformed Baptist church. As well as changing my fundamental theology because of meditating in the psalms I enthusiastically embraced historical Calvinism at the new church. We learned the church was going to give us money to rebuild, and an elder who had a drywall company would finish the walls in our house as a gift. Now you appreciate the considerable amount of supernatural work that I witnessed that started with my lifelong fascination with psalm 29.