Showing posts with label flood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flood. Show all posts

Monday, February 13, 2023

Kindness in the Flood

Cainta, Philippines (near Manila). That evening, we were gathered around the piano singing from a songbook while my mom played piano. We sang a bunch of songs we knew (folksongs, if I remember right), and then we found a very short song called "Scotland's Burning" that we didn't know until then:

Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning!
Look out! Look out!
Fire, fire, fire, fire!
Pour on water, pour on water!

The song was so absurd that we sang it several times, and I could still sing it today.

It had been stormy and rainy the past few days, but we were safe in our house, content in the fact that our driveway had an incline, so it was about 3 feet above street level, should the torrential rain cause flooding. In the past, floods had covered the streets, but never serious enough to reach the level of our driveway.

So I was a bit confused when I woke up the following morning, June 28, 1985, to find living room furniture in our room on the second level of our split-level house (there were about 2 steps between levels). When I went out to investigate, I was shocked to discover water streaming under our sliding glass door into the lower level of the house! My parents and our helper who lived with us had moved furniture and as much other stuff as they could to the second level as the water was approaching. If I remember right, they put the refrigerator on blocks. (I don't remember if it was ours or a friend's, but somebody's refrigerator actually started to float.)

Friends came to help

As the water was about 5 feet deep in the street, it was too deep for me to go out by myself, but with the rate the water was coming in, I also couldn't stay in the house! (At its peak, it was about 2 feet deep in the house.)

Thankfully, our neighbors came to the rescue. They had a much higher second floor where I would be safe. My dad carried me over to the neighbors' house, where they let me stay and wait out the flood waters, while the adults frantically worked to save everything they could from the rising water.

Our neighbors were very friendly. They had a sari-sari store on their ground floor; that is, a small family store with a counter and window. Customers come up to the counter and order food or anything else they want to buy, and then the owners go back and get it, and bring it out. Sari-sari stores were an amazing source of steaming hot rolls (called pandesal) and other fresh food, peanuts, snacks, and other items. As the neighbors' ground floor was also flooded, they had brought their wares up to the second floor, where it was safer. They also had kids, some of whom were younger than me. I remember the neighbors showing me how their dogs could swim. We went out on their porch, and they threw the dogs into the flooded street, and they swam back to us. (The porch had a stairway down to the ground, so that served as the main door in the front of their house, directly above the store.) People in the neighborhood used doors as rafts. Tall friends came over to help my parents with anything they needed. I was amused how some of them used umbrellas, with flood waters up to their shoulders at times, because we wouldn't want to get wet!

[Continued below the pictures]


At our front gate
(The place they were standing was above the street;
thus why the water doesn't come as high on them.
The picture at the top of this post shows
them standing in the street in front of our house.)

Once the water was shallow enough for me to wade in it, my parents got me and I went back to help out. As we bailed water out of the upper level of the house, we were singing, "Pour on water, pour on water!"

That's me on the right, helping to clean the gate.
My t-shirt said "You drive me Bumby's."
No idea what that means, but it still makes me smile.

That was also when we learned our street was on more of an incline than we realized. It didn't look like a hill, as it was gradual, but it was 5 feet deep on our end of the street, and only a couple inches on the other end.

So many people stepped up to help. As with most floods, some people were affected more than others. Some friends had houses on higher ground. Our neighbors took me in to wait it out, safe on their second floor. They did it with a smile, and kept everything as positive and fun as they could. Other friends came to our house while it was flooded to help out. Once the flood water receded, we had a bit of a work party to clean the mud that caked our floors and walls, as well as the car, and move everything back. We put mattresses out on the railings in our backyard to dry out. As difficult as the flood was, everyone's positive attitude was a big help. 

We were able to find humor. I thought it was hilarious that people were wading through shoulder-deep water (in some cases) and holding umbrellas so as not to get wet. The neighbors throwing their dogs into the street made me laugh. (It was safe, as the water was deep enough and the dogs were good swimmers.) The song we had sung the previous evening (about a disaster, no less) kept the tone light as we worked to bail water out.

We were working hard, and nobody wants their house flooded and property damaged. Even so, thanks to everyone's positive attitude and kind, generous spirit, it is actually a happy memory for me on the whole. I wouldn't want to repeat it, but it was a generally happy memory! It's funny how that works.

People sitting on the roof of a pickup,
which was mostly submerged




Sunday, June 15, 2014

Epically Extreme Weather

The day started out so well. Adam and Eve lived in a beautiful garden. Everything was perfect. Then a snake came along and tempted Eve to do the one thing God had told her not to do. The fruit was so delicious that Eve shared it with Adam, and both of them disobeyed God’s one command. That was the first sin. But it got worse. Their son Cain was jealous of his brother Abel and killed him! Cain’s great-great-great grandson Lamech also killed a man.

Adam and Eve’s descendants got worse and worse. Their third son Seth was pretty cool, and he had a descendant named Enoch who, along with Elijah many years later, was one of the only two people who never died. God took him away. People had very long lives at the time. Adam lived 930 years. Enoch’s father Jared lived 962 years. Enoch lived 365 years before God took him away, and his son Methuselah lived the longest of anyone we know of: 969 years! Methuselah had a famous grandson.

The people of earth were getting worse and worse. They worshiped false gods. They killed others. In fact, it got so bad that God actually regretted creating man at all. Finally, God had had enough, and He said, “OK, that’s it. This has got to end. I’m gonna wipe out humans and animals and start over.” But there was one family that was OK with Him. Noah, Methuselah’s grandson, was a good guy.

So God gave Noah a big task. Up to this time, it had never rained. God had watered the earth by the rivers and other means before that. But that was all about to change. A huge flood like the world had never seen was on its way. God told Noah that He would need to build a big boat, called an ark. It was to be made out of cypress wood and pitch so it would be watertight. It would need to have rooms in it. It should be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet tall. It should have three levels. This was a huge project for a family to work on, and it took 120 years. When it was all done, Noah followed more instructions from God by gathering two of every kind of animal on the earth, as well as seven pairs of some of the animals. He stored up enough food to feed his family and all the animals.

Toward the beginning of the big project, Noah had 3 sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. When everything was done, Noah and his wife, his sons and their wives, and all the animals got on the ark. He was about 480 years old when he started the project, 500 when his sons were born, and 600 when he finished and the world changed forever.

So it was that one day, when everyone was on the ark and it had been closed tight, water started spurting out of the ground, and for the first time ever, rain fell in torrents from the sky. Water came from every direction for 40 days and 40 nights. That much water coming from the sky and the ground causes flood waters to rise fast. The water lifted the ark, and pretty soon there was no land in sight. It was 22½ feet above the mountains! Everyone who wasn’t on the ark—people and animals—drowned. We don’t know this for sure, but it’s possible the force of the water even caused the continents to split! The rain and springs of water lasted 40 days, but even when it stopped, everyone on the ark had to wait a long time for the water to start going down. In fact, the flood lasted 150 days! It would have taken even longer for the water to evaporate, but God sent a wind to speed up the process. The flood had started in the second month of their calendar, and it wasn’t until the seventh month that the ark finally landed on the mountain range of Ararat. The water kept going down until the tenth month, and then they started to be able to see the tops of other mountains. 40 days later, Noah sent a raven to see how much it could see. It came back without having seen anywhere to land. Then he sent a dove, and it too came back without having found anywhere to land. A week later, he released the dove again, and it came back with an olive leaf in its beak! If it had been able to find an olive tree above the water, that was a good sign. He waited another week and sent the dove again, but it didn’t come back. By the first day of the next year, the water had mostly dried up. Near the end of the second month, everything was dry again. So God told Noah and his family and the animals to come out of the ark. It had been flooded for a whole year!

Everyone walked out onto dry land! So Noah built an altar and thanked God. Since they had brought seven pairs of some of the animals, he could spare some of them for a sacrifice. God smelled the cooking meat from the altar, and He liked it. That day, God made a promise to Noah. “Never again. I will never send another flood like this to wipe out humans and animals.” As He had done with Adam and Eve, God told Noah he and his descendants could eat the plants and the animals. They weren’t allowed to eat the animals while they were still alive, though. But never again would life be wiped out by a flood. As a sign of this promise, God caused something that had never happened before. As Noah looked up, he saw a beautiful colorful half circle stretch across the sky. Red, orange, yellowgreen, blue, indigo, violet! God promised that whenever a rainbow appeared in the sky, He would remember His promise never again to send such a huge flood.

The Flood
Marker, Sharpie and Pen
© 2014 Steven Sauke

Sunday, December 1, 2013

The Tower of Babel

Proverbs 16:18
Pride goes before destruction
    a haughty spirit before a fall

Questions:

Have any of you learned any languages besides English? Which ones?
Have you tried talking to someone who doesn’t speak English? How did it feel? Did you figure out a way to communicate?

***

In 6 days, God created the earth and everything in it. The first two people He made were Adam and Eve, and they lived in a beautiful garden. God told them that they could eat anything from any of the trees except for one. For a while, they did a good job of obeying that command, but eventually, when the devil tempted them, they disobeyed and ate the fruit of the one tree they weren’t allowed to eat from. That made God very sad, and He had to throw them out of the garden because of it. They had children. Their son Cain was jealous of his younger brother Abel, and let’s just say he overreacted. At any rate, Abel didn’t survive. The first generation was guilty of disobedience, and the second generation was guilty of murder. Things were going downhill fast! Adam and Eve had a third son, whom they named Seth. They also had other children, but we don’t know what their names were. As more generations came along, people got worse and worse. They worshiped idols. They killed people. They did many other horrible things, and finally, several generations later, God had had enough. He caused a huge flood that wiped out everyone but one family and at least two of every animal. Noah and his family were the only ones who followed God, and He had Noah build a boat to save humans and animals.

He had three sons, named Shem, Ham and Japheth, who came with him on the boat. After the flood, Noah’s family started to grow. Ham had four sons. You may not have heard of his sons, but you’ve probably heard of some of the nations they and their descendants founded. Their names were Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan. Cush had a son named Nimrod, who was a powerful king, and he built many cities. You may have heard of Babylon and Nineveh. Those and many others were his handiwork.

At this point, the people had again begun to multiply, and there were lots and lots of them. But they all spoke the same language. People started moving eastward, and they settled in a land called Shinar. Then they decided to build a city. Not just any city. This one would have a tower, and they decided it would be super tall. It should be the tallest building anyone had ever built, and it would reach up into the sky. It would be so tall that people from miles around would be amazed, and they would know how awesome these people were.

So they set to work. They made their own bricks and started construction. God was watching, though, had He had some problems with this. Everybody spoke the same language, and they thought awfully highly of themselves. Too highly. If this kept up, they would be able to do almost anything they set their mind to do, good or bad, and they wouldn’t bother looking to God, who provided what they needed to survive.

So God came up with a plan. Something that had never happened before.

One day, the people were working hard. The leaders were yelling commands at the workers. People talked to each other, and they started noticing something weird. Ils ne purent plus se comprendre.

« Trouve un marteau ! » cria un contremaître.

“Ano?” may nagsabi. “Anong sinasabi mo?”

Après avoir vu plusieurs aspects bizarres, le contremaître répéta : « Un marteau ! Un marteau ! »

“Hindi ko maintindihan” may sumagot. “Anong sinasabi mo?”

様々な所で奇妙な会話が始まりました。Nigdo se nerozumely. De snakket alle forskjellige språk. Por fin, tuvieron que abandonar la construcción de la torre. Mahirap magtrabaho ng sama-sama kung hindi natin maiintindihan ang sinasabi ng ibang tao.

En almal het uit mekaar gespat. They found people they could understand and moved on to different parts of the world.


TRANSLATION:

One day, the people were working hard. The leaders were yelling commands at the workers. People talked to each other, and they started noticing something weird. They could no longer understand each other.

“Get a hammer!” a foreman yelled.

“What?” someone said. “What are you talking about?”

After seeing a bunch of weird looks, the foreman repeated, “A hammer! A hammer!”

“I don’t understand!” someone replied. “What are you saying?”

Weird conversations started all over the place. Nobody could understand each other any more! They were all speaking different languages. Finally, they had to give up. It’s hard to work together on something if you can’t understand what people are saying.

So everyone scattered. They found people they could understand and moved on to different parts of the world.

***

The Hebrew word Babel means "gate of God", and it's similar to "balal," which means confusion. 

***

Questions:

How did making people speak different languages stop the construction?
Why did God stop the building?
Can you think of any other reasons that He might do that?
Do you think God’s punishment was merciful?

***

One reason God did it this way was to keep people from getting too powerful. Being united in a cause gives people lots of power. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but when people are united in rebelling against God, that is a bad thing. He made them speak many different languages so that they couldn’t be too united. Only a few hundred years earlier (which to God would be recent), He had sent a flood and wiped out almost everyone because they had become so evil. He didn’t want to have to do something like that again so soon! Even after the Tower of Babel, people got more evil, and God knew that someday He would have to do something about it. He punished the nation of Israel several times. Some of them even went into exile in Babylon. Notice any similarity between “Babylon” and “Babel”? It was probably the same place! Finally, many years later, God did the ultimate act of mercy. Jesus came to earth as a baby. I expect we’ll be hearing more about that later this month.