Don’t take things for granted.
We hear it often, listen to it occassionally and, from time to time, actually put real action behind the admonition.
But after the devastation our neighbors to the West are experiencing in the wake of Hurricane Helene, we all should sit up and take real notice.
A week ago, people were going about their day-to-day business — vacationers were enjoying warm days meandering little mountain villages like Chimney Rock, Lake Lure, Montreat, Black Mountain, Spruce Pine and Marshall, or enjoying hamburgers on the patio of restaurants in places like Biltmore Village or Antler Hill on the grounds of the Biltmore Estate. Residents were cooking and cleaning, opening and closing businesses, sorting mail, talking to neighbors on the phone and simply doing life as they’ve always know it.
And then the winds came and the river raged, and life as they had known it stopped.
Most of those small towns are wiped away today, with only remnants of buildings and roads left clinging to what little ground hasn’t been swallowed up by the river or been trounced by fallen trees.
It is devastation like most of us have never witnessed, and it is a reminder to cherish what we have, to see life through a brighter lens and to cherish every memory, every moment as if it could be the last one.
The Bible is clear that we are not promised tomorrow or, for that matter, the next breath, but it’s just as clear that in the Bible Jesus provides us the comfort of knowing that even in the darkest of times, joy comes in the morning and peace can be found.
From John 16:33, Jesus talking to his disciples: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
For those struggling in western North Carolina — many of them trapped on mountainsides or in houses toppled from their foundation — the trouble is very palpable, the danger real, but the peace is there in the form of help coming in all directions.
Here in Sampson, a plethora of drives are already under way to collect bottled water, non-perishable items, cleaning supplies and other necessities that thousands upon thousands of folks are going to need, and not just today or this week … for weeks and months to come.
Prayer vigils are being set up and outreach from sources across our state and beyond — the Eastern Baptist Association, NC Baptist Men, the National Guard, the Troopers Association, Samaritan’s Purse — is being extended.
Our communities, like so many across North Carolina and beyond, are becoming the hands and feet of Jesus to a hurting area in need of supplies, our love and most especially our prayers.
If you are reading this editorial, we urge you to stop what you are doing and lift a prayer right now — first a prayer of help, healing and comfort to our western North Carolina brothers and sisters, then a prayer of restoration to those areas so greatly devastated and finally a prayer of thanks for the many things we each have and too often take for granted.
All it takes is looking at one photograph of the destruction to realize what happened in western North Carolina could have happened here.
We have much in which to be thankful, and we owe it to those suffering so much right now to show that thanks and, in turn, do what we can to help those less fortunate today than we are.