Creeping Pain and Progress

By David E. Crosby, Pastor

First Baptist New Orleans

December 11, 2007

I have been creeping around the church and the house lately nursing a strained back muscle. I wish I could say that I pulled a muscle giving a hand up to someone in need. But I was on the second tee box.

I don’t know all the ways in which my legs and arms are connected to my back. I can tell you that the discomfort has traveled around my body from one spot to another without any pattern apparent to me. This morning my knee felt a pinch.

The Apostle Paul observed that when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers (see 1 Corinthians 12). I have been thinking about that truth since the fateful swing. When the back is hurt everything hurts.

A counselor told me this week that estimates of post-traumatic stress disorder in the City of New Orleans run as high as 11 percent. That percentage has risen to unprecedented heights since the great flood rather than decreasing, as one would expect. Post-traumatic stress was evident in less than one percent of the population of New York City months after 9-11.

Everyone here feels it. A senior adult in our church told me Sunday that his life was still out of kilter though he could not explain why this was so. “Something is wrong,” he said. “It’s hard to put into words.”

The body is hurting. I know that for sure. This widow still lives with friends. That couple still works every weekend restoring their flooded home. The teenager on my right is attending his third high school since Katrina. The single on my left just bought a home after months of displacement but fears the challenge of increasing insurance and utility costs.

Every Sunday I discover a new victim of the stress. Addictive behaviors, particularly gambling, are threatening the fortunes, families, and lives of many people living in the devastated Gulf Coast. I wish all gambling establishments would voluntarily close their doors until our people can recover a sense of hope in the future. Right now they are just easy targets.

Janet and I enjoyed a preview of a Broadway musical hopeful last Saturday and had dinner with the troupe that performed. It was a great evening. The singers performed two numbers for the congregation Sunday morning. The musical “Angels,” aimed at Broadway, will launch from New Orleans with the “Broadway South” signature.

Mayor Nagin has cleared the way for the erection of a temporary shelter for the homeless, I learned by email this morning. So we will mobilize volunteers over the next three days to help provide warm and healthy environs for more than 100 homeless persons living in our parks and streets.

We are making progress here, but not without pain. The greatest encouragement is the tremendous sense of family that pervades the church and even our neighborhoods. People we love share our pain and our triumphs. The body hurts with this twisted back, but we know we are on the mend.