Last week I was on retreat in western North Carolina.  We were east enough that Hurricane Helene mostly dealt us wind and rain, and we only lost power and water for about seven hours.  But as we prepared to return home, the news was trickling in that the impact further west was bad – inconceivably devastating.  As I headed east making my way home, signs indicated the highway I was traveling was completely closed in the other direction and that all travel to western North Carolina was forbidden.

On the sobering home drive, as I contemplated all who were suffering and how mostly unscathed I was, a familiar sight appeared:  a line of electric company trucks driving westward.  Having grown up mostly in NC and having been on Long Island during Superstorm Sandy, I felt that familiar overwhelming sense of relief when you see those trucks after a storm.  Help was on the way.  Trucks with their workers from all over the place were dropping everything in their lives to offer up the gifts God gave them to help others.  I knew those in western North Carolina would feel a similar palpable relief to see those glorious white trucks, and I offered a prayer of thanksgiving. 

Fred Rogers used to say, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’”  No matter how much we bemoan our divisions and the political toxicity in our country, it is the helpers that give me hope.  That line of white trucks was a reminder to me that goodness is all around us, even when hopelessness feels like it may drown us. 

I wonder what signs of hope you might be able to spy this week – what glimmers of light are breaking through the clouds if you open your eyes.  Or perhaps the Holy Spirit is beckoning you to be a helper – to be one of those signs of hopefulness in the ways that only you can.  I cannot wait to hear the stories of how God is showing up and birthing hope.