Response to Super-Typhoon Haiyan

St. Paul talks about the "eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. 4:17). I often wondered what he meant. My sense of God's glory has always been that it lifts us up rather than weigh us down. However, in the wake of Super-Typhoon Haiyan, with all its disturbing and disheartening images and stories, I realize that God's glory is indeed a weight if we can’t or won’t share it with people who are afflicted with death and despair. That certainly is the case in Tacloban and the surrounding area in the Philippines.

We have an opportunity to share God's mercy and blessing (which are dimensions of God's glory) in several different ways.

We can pray - and I invite you to use the prayer offered by our Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori -in your private devotions and in your Sunday liturgy:

O God our help in time of trouble, we pray for the Filipino people who have suffered this grievous natural disaster. We pray that survivors may find water, food, and shelter, and news of their missing loved ones. There is trauma and destruction in many places, and little news from some of the areas hardest hit. Give peace and confidence, O Lord, to those in the midst of the whirlwind. Open hearts and hands around the world to respond sacrificially to the urgent need. Help us to remember that we are connected, one to another, the living to the dead, the comfortable to the suffering, the peaceful to the worried and anxious. Motivate us to change our hearts, for our misuse and pollution of the earth you have given us to share has something to do with this disaster. Show us your suffering Son in the midst of this Calvary, that we might love one another as he has loved us. In your holy name we pray. Amen.

We can give - and I invite you to make a contribution to Episcopal Relief and Development. They have already established partners in relief and redevelopment efforts.

And we can do whatever we can to in our own lives to make the spiritual movement from seeing the victims of the storm as strangers from the other side of the world, to embracing them as brothers and sisters with whom we can share whatever we can.

Hurricane Sandy slammed New Jersey a year ago. It was enormously disruptive. So many of our churches became community centers, offering hope and hospitality. Sandy, and Tropical storm Irene a year before that, are benchmarks for us. Super-Typhoon Haiyan brought s scale of destruction and disruption that is beyond what most of us can absorb. It begs our expressions of hope and hospitality.