Footprints After the Storm – by Ruth A. Tucker

Bless the Lord who crowns you with tender mercies (Psalm 103, NKJV).

Tornados acknowledge no holidays—no holy days. Nor does weather of any kind. Many years ago, on an early September Monday, a young man stood up during a testimony time in chapel at a school where I was teaching. He praised God for the wonderful weekend weather. Not a cloud in the sky. He had taken a youth group for an outing on Lake Michigan. Having prayed, God blessed him with sunshine. Trouble was, local farmers were countering his prayers. Their crops were parched and needed more rain before harvest. Did God favor the beach frolickers? We should proceed with caution before crediting or blaming God for weather.

         Until recent record-breaking tornados, the Easter Omaha tornado of 1913 was one of the worst in American history. Nebraska is not necessarily known as tornado alley, but this one tore a path some forty miles long through the state and left more than a hundred people dead in Omaha alone.

         Homes in the most exclusive section of the city were in ruins as were poor tenement buildings. Indeed, rich and poor alike lost loved ones and property. A building where an African-American evening Easter concert was being held was struck without warning, killing some two dozen people. From Nebraska the storm moved on to Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and all the way to New York, spawning tornados and heavy rain all the way. In Terre Haute more than twenty were killed, and in the days that followed massive flooding destroyed most of the homes that had not been ravished by high winds. Dayton, Ohio experienced the worst flood in Ohio’s history—all part of the Easter Sunday Storm.

         A more recent series of tornados hit close to home for me. I was raised on a farm in northern Wisconsin, ten miles west of Spooner. In that region, Stellrecht (my maiden name) is more common than Smith. My father’s four brothers and many nephews and cousins had settled on farms in the area. Then on a warm summer day, June 18, 2001, the routine of farming and village life came to a standstill.

         The national news media headlined the story. One small town after another was in the tornado’s path, Siren nearly destroyed. From there, the line of destruction headed east where woodlands and farm buildings were flattened. Whole herds of cows were killed. Amazingly, only two people died. The names popped right out of the newsprint: my cousin Sylvan Stellrecht and Ruth Phundheller, a nearby neighbor whom I had known from childhood.

         A recent ten-year anniversary edition of the local newspaper featured stories of families who survived. But more than that. Siren survived and became a tighter-knit community in the aftermath. Help poured in from strangers, including a delegation from Comfrey, Minnesota. Only three years earlier some seventy-five percent of that town had been destroyed by a tornado. In August of 2010, work teams from Siren traveled to Wadena, Minnesota to bring tender mercies to that town recently struck by a tornado. Led by Baptist pastor Steve Ward and Deb Jaskolka, the local high school food service manager, they brought skills and tools and food and goodwill to a hurting community.

         In an essay on the ten-year anniversary of the tornado, Ward asks, “Where was God?”  God, he responds, was everywhere: with “the emergency crisis and relief” teams, with the police chief who risked his own life to warn others, with the St. Croix Tribe’s generosity, and with other individuals and organizations too numerous to mention. He concludes: “I thank God for all the special people who came to help and have left their footprints in our hearts forever as they shared their love with us.”

            Amid the devastation and debris, footprints of tender mercies.

Excerpted from Ruth Tucker’s new book, Tender Mercies: 52 Weekly Meditations, available at our book page, www.ptm.org/books.