Does prayer change things? Or us? Or both?

My region of the country still digs out from the aftermath of torrents of rain. At my workout gym this morning the conversations—mine and others—all had do with the devastation. I overheard about a musician-couple who lost treasured instruments; they found her Grand piano, lovingly saved-for for years, flipped upside down by the inundating waters. For days the local news programs have become a slide show of images of sog-ruined furniture hauled to front lawns and curbsides. I cannot get out of mind the multiple videos of cars—cars!—floating on interstates, buoyed by waters that rose out of their stream-beds for the first time in a hundred years—or for the first time ever. To my own heartache, some people lost their life, including a beloved elderly couple that attended my church, swept away, it appears, by a raging, over-swollen creek as they made their determined way to worship services.

And today all around me in the downstairs of our church building still are strewn signs of damage and havoc and just-beginning restoration. I think of a story I heard, too from two of my colleagues at the church, on duty for the very early service Sunday. Leigh, the rector and scheduled preacher for the morning, had just spoken of the unexpected chaos that sometimes intersects our lives: the problems in our businesses, the health issues, the storms. He and Tim Taylor were consecrating the bread and wine for the Eucharist only to look up and see water pouring through the door of the church. The water was just the beginning of the flooding of our entire downstairs—the nave, chapel, first-floor offices, children’s Kindergarten.

And I miss Bill and Frankie, the couple who perished that morning, found downstream the next day.

Water, I’ve heard more than one person say over the last few days, carries powerful force. Waters that nourish the earth and keep us alive can also destroy. We know it not only from personal experience but the biblical record. Habakkuk the prophet spoke of a time when "the raging waters swept on; the deep gave forth its voice; it lifted its hands on high."

Where is God in the raging streams? What matters, I tell myself, is that he is there, too. "When you pass through the waters," God said once, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, words heard also said out loud Sunday morning, "I will be with you." That helps me grasp something important as I witness scenes of ruined furnishings and look into grieving eyes. There is more to the picture. There is a steadying presence I turn to, rocklike and solid. I try to keep a conversation going while I witness the loss of what is precious. I find prayer a consolation. For Someone hears me as I process what I see.