Was there a message from God?
By Jacqueline Ewing
For the St. Louis American
Many among the moral right are quick to pass judgment with regard to Hurricane Katrina, concluding that perhaps it is God’s way of dealing with a sinful people in a sin-filled city. I respectfully beg to differ. Could it be that God’s intention is to call attention to a greater sin – that of a nation that continues to turn its back on those who need its attention the most?
The poor and the sick in this country are sacrificed every day to the politics, policies and budget cuts of America, which leave the well-off on higher ground while forcing the less-fortunate into a bowl of despair with no help in sight.
What is happening in New Orleans, what the world is now privileged to witness up-close and personal, is a symptom of a much-greater problem in our great and mighty homeland. The helpless, the homeless and the sick were all forsaken by our government long before Hurricane Katrina showed up. Yet many among the masses are asking, “What sin has been committed that such wrath should be unleashed upon these people”?
Katrina has simply put faces and names on the budget cuts that impact poor people’s lives every day in the area of education and health. We are all just one budget cut away from huddling together under the nation’s underpasses of life lacking the minimal essentials needed to survive.
Witnessing such a great number of the unfortunate together – as opposed to not seeing them suffer as individuals – makes it all too unbearably real to those who do not encounter the outcast of the nation on a daily basis. People just like these, the elderly and the poor, sit in their homes daily trying to decide whether to buy food or medicine – and die sitting in a wheelchair waiting for help that never comes or comes too late.
A college graduate, I’ve made the most of the opportunities that life has presented. However, I know that had the same disaster hit my town, I would have been among those forced to make a decision to stay put for lack of sufficient means to evacuate. You see, my vehicle was inoperable that particular weekend as I was counting the days to my next paycheck to have it repaired. My aunt, a recent retiree with failing health and no health insurance, would not have been able to make the exodus; her entire monthly income is spent on medication. Without funds to purchase plane or train tickets my aunt, my son and I would have found ourselves at the mercy of nature.
I recently returned from a trip to Africa and returned home feeling blessed as I left so many people whose lives are no doubt less fortunate than my own. However, Katrina has caused me to consider the poor of even this great nation. We are only one disaster, only one paycheck, only one budget cut away from the same condition of those in “underdeveloped” countries.
Who will help us? And God help us all.
