Revelations on the roof: Note this hymn
Pastor and Project Hood -founder Corey Brooks calls on people who blame ‘white supremacy’ as a driving force behind media razor of Camp Mystic Flooding Tragedy.
The River De Guadalupe in Texas rose more than 20 feet in two hours and flowed the countries around Texas. My heart then broke into photos of the innocent victims: campers in Mystic Camp, the camp director, a family champation, a woman who drove to work in Walmart and far too much more. The pure power of the flooding over the innocent reminded me of the weakness of man for the almighty God and his nature.
Although I did not know those girls from Camp Mystic, I can only imagine that they were comparable to the young girls who attend my summer camp on the south side of Chicago. So innocent, curious, naughty, full of life, and always try themselves against the world. They were also with Christ and I imagine that many of the other were deceased. Even if they were not, they lived life as it should be, whether they are with family or go to work while everyone is sleeping.
It has been a long time since I heard this hymn, but this tragedy raised the song in my memory, “When Peace, Like a River.” The first rules are particularly moving:
Flood victims from Texas include Dallas Catholic School Sisters, camp advisor, Walmart employee
If peace is like a river, go to my side
When sorrows roll like sea waves
Whatever my destiny, you taught me to say
It’s good, it’s good, with my soul.
The images of the river and the sea wave remind us of the forces outside our control and they remind us that peace and suffer us visits as part of God’s will. For the Christian, this peace is the highest peace of being with Jesus Christ. When I saw the surviving girls of Mystic Camp sing their religious songs on a bus ride, I heard this peace in their voices and I imagine that their heavenly friends shared the same peace in their souls.
Although Satan has to buffer, although there must be tests
Leave this closest insurance check
That Christ has considered my helpless estate
And has shifted his own blood for my soul.
It is the redeeming sacrifice of Christ that offers certainty and strength in the face of “Satan” or earthly tragedies such as this flood. And immediately after we have heard these words, we hear, “It’s good, it’s good, with my soul.” I am in peace whatever comes. I am in peace, whether I live or die now.
I have seen many deaths in my life as a pastor and I have seen those who ask me: “Why?” And those who are good in their souls. How we live our lives, day after day, how we walk through life, it all matters how.
You don’t have to look far to see evidence of those who are not good in their souls. Sade Perkins, a resident of Houston, who was appointed in the city’s food insecurity sign, wrote Tiktok: “I know I will be canceled for this, but Camp Mystic is a Christian camp for only girls … they don’t even have a token Asian.
She went against saying: “That shit is racism and white supremacy, menstrual period … If they were Spanish children, if they were lgbtq children who were wiped out, you would not give an F — and they would say the same Maga people that they earn it and that God’s will is, so f-all.”
Then Dr. Christina B. Propst, a pediatrician (!), Also posted on Tiktok: “May all visitors, children, non-Maga voters and pets are safe and dry.” And then: “Kerr County Maga voted to substantiate Fema. They deny climate change. May they get what they voted for. Bless their hearts.”
After reading those comments in the news together with many others, politicizing this tragedy, I returned to this song again:
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not partly but the whole
Is nailed to the cross and I don’t wear it anymore
Price the Lord, prize the Lord, oh my soul!
It is through the crucifixion of Christ that our sins will be forgiven and that must be celebrated, because it offers us hope and liberation of feelings of guilt. This leads us to the peace in the soul, the peace that we need in the light of all trials that can come.
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If Jordan will roll above me,
No Pang will be mine, because in death as in life
You will whisper your peace to my soul.
The song ends with the repeated chorus of “it’s well with my soul” as a mantra of faith. While the photos of the deceased started to find themselves in the news, I noticed that I sang this chorus over and over again as my hope for their souls and as my own will of faith.
I don’t know what the world or God will bring us. We have no power about that. But we have the power of those camp girls who sing songs from Christ after the tragedy.
We have rooted the power of strengthening peace in religious or spiritual beliefs instead of external circumstances. We are nothing more than our soul and we have to cherish the peace inside, so that we are ready, whatever there is.
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And Lord, hurry the day when faith will be a view,
The clouds are reversed as a role;
The Trump will resound and the Lord will descend,
Yet my soul is doing well.
