Hitting Home: American Refugees

Today as I was watching coverage of the devastation and tragedy in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast I thought "This doesn't even look like America. It's just not something we see in this country. And "refugees"? Refugees in America?! It's just unimaginable"

And just now on CNN, Aaron Brown got choked up on the same word. It's hard to comprehend using the word "Refugee" to describe an American right here in our own country.

Please join in prayer, not only for the families and their suffering, but for the rescue efforts that are going on from the military to the police to the normal every day folks who are themselves survivors but are now going around and rescuing others. As darkness is covering New Orleans, rescue efforts will be even slower. Prayers are needed.

...as well as donations.

You can call

1-800-HELP-NOW
to donate to the Red Cross.

Or
1-800-SAL-ARMY
for the Salvation Army.

Tomorrow is blog relief day. As I heard a few reference on TV tonight, we gave over 1 billion dollars to help people on the other side of the world, how much are we willing to give to those in our own country. Because how many other countries do we really think are going to have telethons to raise money for America?

Here is a list of participating blogs as well as many helpful charities to whom you can contribute.

More on this tomorrow. Tonight, prayer. It's an unbelievable situation that is impossible for some of us to even begin to understand. But God understands and He can bring comfort and peace beyond all understand.

UPDATE:Tonight (9/1) NBC's Brian Williams shared that he had said to a co-worker "When we get back to the states..." and then realized that they were in America. It didn't look like the America they had known, but it was America just the same.