I saw on the morning news that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be into hurricane season next week. We live in the Southeast so hurricanes are an issue. In the Midwest tornadoes are on the menu for this time of year, although we get our share of those down here as well. I also saw on this morning\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s local broadcast that Los Angeles suffered another aftershock from Sunday night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 4.7 earthquake. I guess that no matter where you live, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a natural disaster of some sort right around the corner.<\/p>\n
Last night I watched a documentary about just how America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s financial meltdown started on Wall Street and spread to Main Street. And how, if you can imagine it, it could have been much, much worse. I guess if a natural disaster doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get us, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll create a man-made one to do the job.<\/p>\n
Scary stuff.<\/p>\n
For the last eight weeks I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been writing about \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThriving in Tough Times\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/em>. I began discussing the issue at 30,000 feet, trying to give you the big picture before we got down to details. I figure that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re so adept at creating our own personal \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnatural disasters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/em> in daily life that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do ourselves in before the next hurricane, tornado or financial meltdown has the opportunity.<\/p>\n Solving any problem, for me, begins with a look inside and then focusing on the big picture. Once I have those two squared away, I can move on to the details. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I put this series in the following order (just click the link to these previous week at the top of this post to scroll back), covering the big stuff first, and then working my way down to the details.<\/p>\n Week 1: Adopting a truly Christian worldview<\/p>\n Week 2: Putting spiritual priorities ahead of physical priorities<\/p>\n Week 3: Attending to Physical Priorities<\/p>\n Week 4: Living a stewardship lifestyle<\/p>\n Week 5: Pursuing your God ordained purpose<\/p>\n Week 6: Getting out of debt<\/p>\n Week 7: Tempering your faith in world systems<\/p>\n Week 8: Living in community<\/p>\n The turmoil this world is going through isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to be over tomorrow. Jesus will return one day and set things right, but he told us himself that great trouble would befall the world before he returns (read Matthew 24 and Mark 13). The only way we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to survive the tough times we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in now and the tougher times to come is by having our priorities right \u00e2\u20ac\u201c big stuff first.<\/p>\n This week, however, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to be looking at the short term. In all of our preparation for eternity and for long term spiritual and financial welfare in tough times, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want us to lose sight of being able to survive the next three days. In the same way some folks have never prepared to survive eternity or even their retirement (whatever that<\/em> means these days) a lot of folks aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even prepared to survive three days in the event that their umbilical cord to the grid is temporarily severed.<\/p>\n Natural disasters do that; sometimes man made disasters do it too. Should a disaster, sudden and short, befall you, would you be able to carry on for three days without Starbuck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, the ATM, Edison Electric or the Dish Network? Or would you be praying for the Red Cross truck to set up shop on the curb outside?<\/p>\n Short term disasters happen all the time. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, got caught with their pants down after hurricane Katrina. More than 1,400 people in Louisiana died and hundreds of thousands lost access to their homes or jobs and were separated from family members. For the folks who went through the storm and its aftermath, it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t what they would define as a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcshort term\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/em> disaster.<\/p>\n FEMA knows now that a Katrina-like disaster can happen at any time, and they know that it will; they just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know when and where. So they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re prepared \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as prepared as they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to get, anyway. You know their first line of defense? Convincing you<\/em> to be prepared. What they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re saying is, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do what we can folks, but if you want to survive, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re chances are better if you take care of yourselves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em> That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comforting.<\/p>\n So when and where is the next natural or man made disaster going to take place? FEMA doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know; neither do I. But they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re more regular and widespread than you might think. The president of the United States declared a state of disaster or emergency 377 times between 2000 and 2007. There were 92 declared last year \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost twice a week; they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting more frequent. And they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re spread pretty evenly across the country; unless you live in western Colorado or parts of Nevada (of course your chances of freezing in the Rockies or getting lost in the desert go way up), there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pretty good chance your home will show up on a FEMA map one day.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/declarationsmap2000_07.jpg\" "\\"declarationsmap2000_07\\"")
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