"Just Like You And Me..."

These are folks just like you and me. Good and decent human beings wishing only to live their quiet, unassuming lives in quest of America's long-standing promises of life, liberty and happiness. Countless thousands of these nameless and faceless individuals have this spring and early summer been devastatingly disrupted throughout the heartland of our nation.

The news reports are filled with the tragic stories of dozens of communities that have been pillaged by indiscriminate tornadoes that in mere seconds of unquenchable fury have unleashed their massive whirlwinds of total destruction that many of the truly unfortunate souls along their departed paths may never fully recover from. Even now the otherwise postcard rivers are spilling relentlessly out of their banks, silently sending their unstoppable mud drenched flood waters to consume in their murky depths a life time of accumulated possessions and personal treasures soon to be forever relegated to fading memories. My heart weeps for these good people.

Early in Abraham Lincoln's presidency there was assembled an august collection of the best minds in the country to determine an answer to the question, "What the one thing that could be determined to be forever constant?" An interesting philosophical exercise that captured the imagination of each of the gentlemen given the task to decide that issue. After months of careful and arduous deliberations, the answer was presented to Mr. Lincoln. "Change," they declared, was the only thing that must be determined as constant. Thus it is true as it applies to the world's and our nation's weather. We may count with some certainty on the predictability of regional weather patterns that reintroduce themselves seasonally. Here in central Florida it is anticipated that by late May and certainly by early June the "rainy season" will arrive and we can expect daily thunderstorms. What remains unpredictable is the severity of each of theses storms. From June through November the Atlantic is sure to produce tropical disturbances that have the unpredictable potential to evolve into monster storms that have the further potential to become cataclysmic should they come ashore. But where?

We each and all are captives to change...to the predictable unpredictability of so many issues that effect our daily lives...our economy, our jobs, our health, even the weather. For the doomsayers to declare that each and every weather phenomena that does not fall within the the parameters of predictability is the result of mankind's adverse effect on the global climate is disingenuous at best and fear mongering at worse. Nature is going to do what nature wants, and the best we can do is to hopefully prepare as best we can and then hang on. "For there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven." In this life there are no guarantees.

What must change, however, is our ever increasing propensity to be dependent upon government to be the captains of our fate whenever storm clouds appear on the horizon. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina proved that government is incapable of extracting people from harm's way either before or after a natural disaster. What must never change is the resiliency of our fellow countrymen and women to stare squarely in the face the aftermath of devastation and bind together in mutual compassion to lift each other up to begin anew. The tradition of a community barn raising may be a thing of the nostalgic past, but that spirit of fellow man helping their fellow man is a live and well in our land. We must not lose that sense of being our brother's keeper in times of plenty and especially in times of need. We are a self-reliant people whose continued success as a nation of people remains intertwined in the fate of our neighbors.

Sandbags are being filled today in Iowa as the flood water continue to rise. A destroyed home is being searched for the missing as the storm clouds roll away across Kansas. Today in middle America our fellow citizens are asking sorrowful questions that have no answers, but even now they are beginning to pick up the pieces to journey forward once again. Our earnest and heartfelt prayers need be with them. For one day in our unpredictable futures, we may ourselves need their prayers.