The Consequences of Ignoring a Tornado Warning and the Importance of Trust in God

10/15/2014

Earlier today, I foolishly ignored a tornado warning and thought I would have time to walk back from Union Station to our building. The trip usually takes seven minutes and I honestly thought I would be able to squeeze it in before having to shut myself indoors. I have never experienced an tornado outdoors before and fortunately, DC did not experience a tornado today. However, both rain and wind reached their maximum power on my short walk. They were both powerful and caused the streets to flood, a state of nature to erupt amongst those of us left on the street (good ol' polic sci reference) and a suspension of status-quo when it comes to the idea of crosswalks in contemporary American society. I cannot put into words how frightening the experience was. Adrenaline was racing through my body and I instantly searched for shelter. It was so horrible I came close to knocking on the doors of people I have never met and asking for the protection of their homes. Fortunately, I safely made it into the supermarket down the street from our building. In Ohio, I remembered being in our dorm's basement for a while in the sole tornado I have experienced before. I didn't want to experience this in the supermarket lobby. I looked over and saw a lady from my office with an umbrella who intended to make a break for it. We have never spoken before, but I have seen her many times and always given her a smile. "Wait, I'm coming with you!" I shouted and her response was "it's a small umbrella...keep close!"We dashed through the worst of the storm and jumped over two impressively large puddles to make our way safely into the office and also soaking wet. Let me clarify that jumping into a pool would not have made me more drenched than I was this afternoon. Fortunately, a male intern let me change into his extra shirt and the many cups of warm water I had made the recovery sweet. I honestly sit here today in a spirit of dumbfound luck. Adrenaline rushes always make things fun in the moment and I certainly felt like Jason Bourne while running through DC, but I look back at the storm with a sense of fright and sit in appreciation of my safety.

Life, like this afternoon's storm, can often seem overwhelming and too fast-paced to keep up with. There are no shortage of issues racing through my mind and worries only seem to multiply off of one another by the day. I have most recently been reflecting on the importance of trusting God through the ever-changing adversities in life.  Ultimately, everything get puts into perspective through prayer and contemplation of the bigger picture. Adversity will come..sometimes we can even see it coming miles ahead of schedule. I don't believe trusting in God equates to an end to the rough journeys ahead. I also am not expecting God to give me any specific answers to the many, many questions I have for him now. Our relationship will deepen through my learned experiences along the path, but I must remember to keep Him close. All obstacles are possible to overcome with His strength. Unexpected happenings are occurring in my own life and there is no obvious result in sight for many of them. I see beauty, happiness and pain all as legitimate outcomes of what I am experiencing now. A closeness to Christ strengthens me and gives me lenses to view these new challenges through. Trust is what I struggle with most and also my greatest asset.

The Wisdom of Ebrahim Rasool, the South African Ambassador to the United States

Notes from dialogue between Dave Robinson, World Vision International Partnership Leader: Islamic Contexts, and 

Ebrahim Rasool, Ambassador from the Republic of South Africa to the United States

2014 World Vision Day of Prayer.

National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C.

10/1/2014

Steven Howard

-Is adversity necessary for foundation of good character?

-Heart has a finite capacity. Fill it with bitterness, no room for love.

-What goes into your heart?

-In South Africa, we had conscious leaders who wrestled with their souls before they led.

-Before prison, Nelson Mandela was an intolerant man. In prison, he reflected on his previous 

prejudices. He needed prison to purge the bitterness from his heart before he became a leader of 

reconciliation.

-People aren’t our enemies, unjust systems are.

-In anti-apartheid activism, we had to make sure that whites were visibly apart of our movement. We 

had to hold black people accountable as well so that they did not form the impression that all white 

South Africans were evil and all non-white South Africans were good.

-Evil is not the natural endowment of a people.

-Truth and Reconciliation commission is based off of forgiveness.

-Notion of reparation for past wrongs does not work. Human life can’t be monetized. It discredits the 

suffering and pain of those persecuted to attempt to put a price on their tribulations.

-Post-modernism relativizes everything. There is nothing that lifts our eyes to visions above ourselves. 

Religions must respond thoughtfully with orthodoxy to nihilism (of which postmodernism is).

--Extra Note from Steven: Informally after his lecture, the Ambassador went into some more 

depth about this. He stated that meshing religions together isn’t the way for interfaith cooperation to 

work. Orthodoxy needs to be maintained, but the commonalities between faiths need to be emphasized 

when they are working together. So interreligious liturgies in South Africa would usually emphasize Old 

Testament passages so as to unify multiple faiths together. I also thought of his mentioning of Moses 

and Jonah in his own lecture—figures both of our faiths celebrate.

-In the Quran, God tells us to go on a different path. Not the obvious path of the Five Pillars of Islam, but 

on the path of freeing the people who are enslaved.

-Globalization discounts faith and tradition.

-Loving relationships with neighbors are prerequisites for a loving relationship with God.

-Rabbis state that compromise is the bridge between peace activism and justice activism. Peace activism

without compromise can perpetuate conflict and justice activism without compromise can post-pone 

peace.

-How do we makeshift from competitive faith to cooperative faith?

--We are battling for the very concept of faith in the world today.

-Forgiveness: You can’t ask for what you don’t forgive. You can’t refuse to forgive your neighbor and 

then ask God to forgive you.

-In South Africa anti-apartheid movement, we met in a World Vision property. No need for explicit

proselytization, we could tell the Christian organization was loving by its actions.

-Acts of kindness are physical manifestations of deeper missions.

-What we don’t know, we fear and act in ignorance.

-How do we do things both physical and metaphysical?

-We are facilitators of the reconciliation process.

-Extremism thrives when people are outside of their mandate.

-Victims can’t participate in reconciliation process...they’re not in a position to discuss. Release your 

people from victimhood. Mandela affirmed people.

-You can’t have “racial harmony” with inequalities between genders, religions, people of different sexual 

orientations, etc. because these latter inequalities invalidate a society’s perceived sense of equality with 

race. 

-Steven H.’s note: Sort of a new way of stating Martin Luther King’s, “Injustice anywhere is a 

threat to justice everywhere.”

Steven H.’s note: During his informal discussion with the interns after the talk, I asked the ambassador 

about we Americans can learn about racial reconciliation from South Africa. He stated the U.S. needs to 

understand that racial inequality in this society is not a thing of the past, but is still a struggle that needs 

to be viewed as such. Consequently, the reconciliation process here needs to continue and Ferguson 

should be viewed as an opportunity for dialogue and not division. He mentioned the U.S. rose to 

superpower status with large immigrant population and their descendants, but now we emphasize the 

“melting pot” model and we are not advancing at the rate we used to. He stated multiculturalism needs 

to be affirmed and celebrated. We have to celebrate our identity as an immigrant nation and stop 

forcing people to reject their native cultures.

-I also asked him what advice he had for my future Peace Corps service in Morocco since I am a Christian 

who will be working in a predominantly Muslim society. This is specifically when he mentioned the 

preservation of orthodoxy and the celebration of commonality note I mentioned above. He told me to 

emphasize my commonalities with the people there and not our differences.