There was one item that Mr. Clarence Jones left behind besides his sandals. And the fact that he left this particular item puzzled me greatly. Months later, it still does. He seemed to place much value on it. I can not remember seeing him without it and several times I saw him sitting, cupping it in his hands, studying it. Perhaps he did not know what to do with it, its purpose and its place in his life. Perhaps he saw it as something that belonged only to Spring Lake Baptist Camp and had no value in the world where he was going. Or maybe he just left it because he wanted to share it with the next man who would claim his vacated bed. I just don’t know.
I am talking about his Bible.
When arriving at the camp, one of the first things that the guests of Spring Lake received, right after food, a shower and a bunk, was a Bible. They were the small, green, King James New Testament variety that years ago I remember a Gideon handing out at my elementary school. The evacuees received them gladly!
I can understand that need for God’s Word. If I lost all of my possessions, I believe that one of the first things for which I would ask is a Bible. Put a Bible in my hand, and I can find all sorts of truths to grab on to. I can know the height and depth of Jesus’ love for me (Ephesians 3) and I can say with confidence that nothing will separate me from that love (Romans 8). I can bless the name of the Lord along with Job in the middle of despair (Job 1). I can walk with David through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23) and cling like a tick on a dog’s back to Jesus’ description of "His Father’s House" (John 14). The Bible is the tangible, holdable, proof of God’s promises to me. But without it, I go blank. I feel spiritually stupid. Without it, I am just relying on my memory, and my memory isn’t so good.
I am sure that some of the evacuees at Spring Lake felt that way, too. I met a few dear saints who in those first days after arriving at the camp were hungrily eating God’s word. To them, a few days without physical food at the Superdome paled compared to a few days without spiritual food at the time they needed it the most.
On the other hand, I believe that the average evacuee who came to Spring Lake, probably like the average person elsewhere in our country, held his Bible more like a man holds a lucky charm. At some point in his life, he had been told that the answers to all problems were in this book. Katrina had brought him plenty of problems. He needed answers. So why not give the lucky charm a try? Maybe if he got lucky enough he could find a verse to name and claim.
I was however later to discover that there were actually two other categories of people looking at those Bibles. There was a rather large segment of the evacuees who could not read, or at least could not read with confidence. These people were longing for someone to tell them what everyone else was so interested in. And the fourth group, as hard as it is it believe in our Judeo-Christian culture, was made up of men and women who had never seen a copy of the scriptures before and honestly were just trying to figure out why they had been given a little green book, especially when they needed so many other things.
It was seeing all those folks holding Bibles, looking for answers that awakened the evangelist in me. I wanted to be like Philip when he asked the Ethiopian, "Do you understand what you are reading?" (Acts 8:30) But I wasn’t sure that I had the courage to talk to strangers. Fortunately, the Lord knew what I needed and had already been preparing me for the work He had planned.
On the Sunday before the Katrina evacuees arrived at Spring Lake, I had listened to my pastor preach about missions work. In theory, I loved the idea of being a missionary. From the time I read my first storybook of famous missionaries like David Livingstone and Hudson Taylor, I had entertained the idea of going to a mission field. So on that Sunday, when Pastor challenged us to pray that God would make us a missionary, I did.
I did not pray the "Here am I, send me" prayer of Isaiah. No, that would have been a lie. Instead, I was honest with the Lord. I told Him that I knew that I had made some life choices that limited where I could go. I acknowledged my responsibilities toward my husband and my children and my aging parents. I admitted that since I had chosen to work at home and educate my children at home, my mission field was very small and near to home. Going to the grocery store on the other side of town where I didn’t know the girl at the checkout counter was about as close to a mission field as I was going to get. Pretty much everyone I came in contact with on a day to day basis already claimed to be a Christian. I just could not see a mission field anywhere in my future, but I told God that if He could find me one, then I was willing to be his missionary. My prayer was almost like a dare.
I ought to know better than to dare the Almighty.