One of the many moving stories told pic.twitter.com/WzpGOGHvNf

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) March 23, 2019

–Shared by yours truly in the morning sermon–KSH.

Arnie Rosen, a retired doctor and amateur musician, created the “Band Grandpas” program in Rockford, Illinois so senior instrumentalists can help students and spread the joy of music.

watch it all.

The fields where my grandfather and his brothers once played football are currently covered by several feet of water.

My grandpa Bert was born in a small Nebraska town called Oakland, a couple hours north of Lincoln, just down the road from Senator Ben Sasse in Fremont. Like much of northeastern Nebraska, these towns are now in crisis, battling the historic flooding that has devastated the state’s farms and ranches, killed three people, and dislocated thousands.

Currently the state estimates $439 million in damages to infrastructure, $85 million in damages to homes and businesses, $400 million worth of cattle lost, and $440 million of crops destroyed, placing the total damages, by my count, at around $1.3 billion….

Sadly, I cannot help but see this quickening destruction happening in my home state. The flood has soaked thousands of homes and hundreds of businesses to ruin in places that already struggled with a trajectory of economic decline and despair brought about by forces outside their control.

To understand the impact of these catastrophic floods in Nebraska—what they will mean for the communities in the weeks, months, and years after the rivers recede and the roads clear—we have to look at the state of the farmers, the men and women who have loved this place even when no one else did.

Read it all.

In the aftermath of this year’s flooding, many Nebraskans will show the generosity and persistence that defines this place and many others like it.

But rural America needs more than the occasional profile highlighting its ordinary decency https://t.co/wGgLLwDzT0

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) March 22, 2019

“I could not exist therefore, my God, were it not for Your existence in me. Or would it be truer to say that I could not exist unless I existed in You, of whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things?”

–St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 1, Chapter 2

Do thou give us, O Holy Spirit of God, a new mind to comprehend thy loving purposes, a new heart to rejoice in them, and a new perseverance upon the paths of thy will, now and for ever.

—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

The LORD reigns; he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed, he is girded with strength. Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved;
thy throne is established from of old; thou art from everlasting.

–Psalm 93:1-2