It was comforting to gather with fellow-worshipers last Sunday while we were in Tennessee with our Brentwood grands. I had gone to sleep the night before thinking about and praying for the grief-stricken families in Texas. I sensed there were many others praying, dwelling on the unimaginable, horrific loss during the historic flooding. 

As the news began erasing all the 4th of July news and celebrations, the verse from Matthew 2 kept running through my mind: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and much grieving. Rachel weeping for her children, and she did not want to be comforted, because they were no more.” 

It was a descriptive verse of the aftermath of King Herod’s mandate to his soldiers to kill all the boy babies who were two years old and younger. Herod’s demonic greed to kill any royal rival was the reason for such agony of grief and loss for so many families — so many nurturing, loving mothers. 

That verse had always triggered my imagination of such horror and the brutality of swords running red with the blood of babies and toddlers. Rachel, representative of Israel, was weeping amidst a nightmare that had no consolation.  

Then the news of another nightmare had broken into all the news outlets. Young girls, families, grandparents — so many were swept away in the tsunami of Guadalupe River. The loss saturated my thoughts.

I carried that heaviness into our Sunday worship. It was one of the worship songs that separated my grief from the reality of Christ:

 “To this I hold, my hope is only Jesus; For my life is wholly bound to His —

The night is dark, but I am not forsaken; For by my side, the Savior, He will stay

I labor on in weakness and rejoicing; For in my need, His power is displayed.

To this I hold, my Shepherd will defend me, Through the deepest valley, He will lead.

Oh, the night has been won, and I shall overcome; Yet not I, but through Christ in me.”

Camille Anding, The Daily Leader,  P. O. Box 551, Brookhaven, MS 39602.