Good Can Come from Hard Times

October 12, 2025

(This Plank’s Ponderings was written 8/17/2014 when I was Pastor of Eagle Creek Baptist Church in Benton County)

The Piney River is a calm, meandering stream that flows gently behind our house. We are blessed to have a swimming hole, canoeing river, and fishing hole right in our backyard.  However, during the 2010 flood, we were gifted a house full of water from this same "gentle" river.  It took us a year to get back into our house.  During that year, we lived in a barn for a while.  We also lived at a campground.  We had several issues with rebuilding our house. County codes, flood insurance delays, electrical inspectors, and the snowiest winter in several years presented us with many challenges.  As a matter of fact, we are still dealing with the aftermath of rebuilding.  As I write this, an electrician is finishing up the rewiring of some faulty work done by a well-meaning but less-than-satisfactory contractor.  The electrical snafu follows on the heels of major plumbing problems that had to be corrected due to the same contractor.  It has been slow, tedious, and frustrating, but you know what?  Due to the 2010 flood, my family and I have experienced some wonderful things that otherwise would have eluded us.  While taking truckloads of muddy carpeting, drywall, and river gunk to the dump, we got a chance to meet some people there who were hurting, depressed, and reeling from their own losses in the flood.  I had the opportunity to encourage them and to remind them that in spite of our losses, none of us lost anything that could not be replaced.  We also got to experience a truly "non-denominational" recovery effort.  We had a  Methodist clean-up crew, a Baptist crew who helped gut the house, a Pentecostal yard crew, and a Mennonite building crew who all did a wonderful job helping us clean up the mess that was left by 20ish inches of rain and who also helped us rebuild our house so that we could return home.   We received furniture from the Church of Christ folks and clothes from some Baptists.  I also got to share the fellowship of wonderful neighbors who made sure my family had a place to sleep, food in our bellies, and clothes on our backs.  While our home was being rebuilt, the church where I preach was used as a headquarters for the Red Cross, which made sure flood victims had hot meals to eat. So, while being helped on one hand, I was also able to serve others with my other hand. While I am REALLY frustrated with the electrical and plumbing issues that we have to fix, I also realize that we serve a  wonderful God who sometimes uses our valleys to allow others to take us by the hand and help us back to the mountaintop.  Sometimes we need reminding.

Be blessed and be a blessing . . . Bro. Andy