When You Pass through the Waters

When You Pass through the Waters.  WhatsApp chirped at me yesterday at 11:30 AM with new messages from my contact in Tete, Mozambique. Pastor Bowman typed, “How can we savaive with this?no any help” and included 22 photos from his mobile phone. How can we survive this? There is no help.

Cyclone Freddy, a historic storm that meteorologists have classified as “the most energetic ever recorded” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-64928093), continues to carve a path of destruction through Bowman’s community, as well as the entire length of Mozambique, now Malawi, and toward Zambia and Zimbabwe, too. In terms of this storm, the slower it goes, the worse the flooding gets. Freddy is barely inching north.

Over the last few weeks, Bowman and I have been exchanging messages ahead of our Bible Institute in mid-April. But understandably, today most of the cultural niceties fell away. His English might be rudimentary, but it is far better than my Portuguese! Yet it doesn’t take Google Translate to pick up Bowman’s meaning or his fear.

When he says, “no any help,” he means no any help – no fire departments, no policemen, no community shelters, no choppers, no inflatable rafts, no federal relief programs, and no power because the hydro-electric power grid had to be deactivated to prevent its total collapse from the floods. Bowman used some of his precious phone battery to ask for prayer.

I replied immediately with the first Bible verse that popped into my mind. “We are praying Isaiah 43:1-2 for you and for all Mozambique – ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you’ – in Jesus’ name. Amen.” Bowman signed off with, “Amen pastor god bless you for  encouragement.”

With no new news since, no any help still occupies a space in my mind like a lump. Though there may be no any help from humans, with God there is always help. “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” ... Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:63, 68-69).

My trip to Mozambique may, literally, be washed out but God’s help is never diluted.