Beyond the Tracks
by aaron carriere

Once the rental van pulled over the train tracks, the car fell eerily still.

The anticipation of what lied beyond the barbed wire fence across the tracks, guarded by police patrol cars and Army-issued Humvees, was quickly replaced with the reality of destruction and confirmation of the rumors we'd heard about “the other side.�

We crawled up-and-down the coastal streets of Gulfport, Mississippi in shock. It looked as if garbage had been stockpiled for years and dumped on the coast.

Houses were no longer recognizable, let alone standing. Cars were displaced and destroyed and flipped over and mashed in. The only buildings that survived were those whose mass was large enough to sustain the 160 m.p.h. winds and the 35 foot waves that abused the coast without mercy for eight hours, only to be followed up three weeks later by Rita.

I caught a vision of a large, beautiful rectangular-shape Baptist church that overlooked the coast, now completed gutted with no walls and hardly a foundation keeping it standing. Like a doctor examining X-rays to reveal a person's broken bones, I imagined how the church used to be before August 29. I imagined the rowdy Sunday morning services and dancing and “Amen's!� and “Hallelujahs!� and “Praise the Lord!� and barbequed chicken and deep fried catfish and weddings and funerals and laughter and joy and sorrow.

And all I can see are skeletons of what used to be. And this was after two months of “clean-up.�

I have to admit; I haven't watched the news consistently since early September. I'd been so caught up in my own world that I figured since I sent my donation, I'd done my Christian duty. The images on TV of New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama affected me for a while, but it didn't last.

Like the Tsunami in Asia, we have the tendency to be generous when our heartstrings are being pulled visually, but our hearts become calloused and we soon forget what happened.

I soon forgot about Katrina and Rita.

However, our church offered our group of twentysomethings the chance to go on a short-term missions trip down to the Gulf Coast. I signed up to go. Ten of us boarded a fifteen-passenger van and headed south, 16 hours straight through the night to arrive in Gulfport.

As we approached the coast, you could see the early evidence of Katrina's path. It looked as if the fingers of God himself started flicking trees, instantly snapping them in two, and uprooting those with trunks big enough for the wind to catch with his thumb and index finger. I imagined the breath of God blowing the tree line until they all neatly conformed into a 65-degree angle formation.

Once we got to the church we were staying with, we met Bob. One of the most emotional men I've ever met, Bob was brought to tears telling stories of answered prayers since he'd been thereâ€"how he's seen cancer disappear twice and numerous people coming to Christ through the efforts of the storm. He shared stories and told us that none of us would leave changedâ€"he promised we'd all take something out of the trip.
When he got too emotional, he would pump his fists high into the air and shout “Woo! Glory!� A prayer warrior, it was evident that Bob was passionately in love with Jesus, and referred to Christians and “church people,� noting the difference. The latter, he confessed, is what he used to be before his experience in the south.

We also met Dale and Terry, a couple from Columbus, Ohio, who were actually living out the gospelâ€"they sold their car, which was everything they had (Jesus in Matthew 9:21)â€"and moved into the church. Dale later confessed that he was an alcoholic before coming down to Gulfport, and hadn't had a drink in over three weeks.

Expectations

I had tried to limit my “expectations� I had for the trip.

We had heard that the weather was going to be good and we had envisioned doing heroic things and helping as many people as we can. We went to meet the needs of the people and to be the hands and feet of Christ. We hoped our actions would speak louder than our words and that our hearts would be hearts of service. We prayed we would have the window to talk to someone about Jesus. We talked about denying ourselves and exercising community, and being open to wherever God would lead us.

We woke up the next day to rain.

Our visions of purple hearts froze with the reality of the weather. Nonetheless, we suited up in ponchos and prepared to go to the “other side� to remove a tree embedded in someone's house.

It started to rain harder.

Our plans were drenched. I remembered Bob talking the night before about how he had surgeons and businessman circle through the complexâ€"only to clean the men's bathroomâ€"with joy.

The group was growing frustrated as the clock ticked. We began to question, “Why, God?�

Then one of the men gathered us around to pray in a circle.

I had heard from Bob that God had been consistently answering prayer down in Gulfport, but I was cynical. They said that God had answered specific prayers everyday, and we should soak everything in prayer. But something inside me doubted.

It was one of the most beautiful prayers that I've ever experienced.

Not because it was beautifully constructed, or filled with eloquent language, but because it was a powerful prayer for a need at a specific point in time. I felt the Spirit rush over with a sense of peace as we acknowledged that God had made the plans for today, and that we were willing to submit to them, regardless of what they were.

As soon as the prayer ended, we had a plan set for the day. We headed over to a woman's house that they had put on a brand-new roof the day before.

Three of us helped move the shingles and old-roof to the side of the road for pickup and raked the debris, while the team inside put up a makeshift plastic ceiling to cover up the leaky insulation.

I had to peek inside the other side of the house where the women were staying. There was an elderly woman lying in bed, preparing for her kidney dialysis. We struck up some conversation. The women had beautiful spirits and were grateful for us.

We spent the morning going back-and-forth to worksites. After lunch, the rain started again. We ended up with orders to sort clothes in an Army tent.

We all wanted to be outside in the community. We all wanted to be working on roofs and talking with the people and sharing our faith as best we could.

But God wanted us sorting clothes. We took our trip across the tracks, and God put our lives in perspectiveâ€"and realized that it’s not about us.

We may have no way of knowing whether or not our visit to Mississippi brought anyone closer to Jesus. We will never know if the roofs we built will last or the window will keep the woman with kidney dialysis warm this winter. The amount of work that needs to be done is beyond my comprehension. Bob estimated that it will take two to four years to completely rebuild.

In the grand scheme, our physical work was like a grain of sand on the seashoreâ€"but it wasn't in God's eyes. I think God taught each of us something different sorting clothes.

I think back to all the acts of servanthood of Jesus. He washed his disciples weathered feet. He praised the woman who gave two coins, while the Pharisees clanged their donations into a self-righteous offering plate. He exemplified self-sacrifice by dying on the cross. For me. For you. For us.

And Jesus left the same message for us: “Follow me.�

Joy

I felt the joy of the Lord on my trip.

It was differentâ€"for a change, I was living on an agenda that wasn't focused around me. It wasn't focused on my deadlines, the various stresses in my life, or how I could get ahead. It was focused on God.

It was an exercise in community. We spent nearly every moment together for four days, and we returned with stronger friendships than when we left. We endured life on the road, cramped in a van and trusting each other for safety and accountability. We shared our stories of what God did in our hearts on the trip home, but I imagine that God was just planting seeds, and the cultivation of those will be clearer in the future.

We laughed. We cried. We served together. We lived together. We bit our tongues when we were frustrated. We encouraged each other and met each other's needs. We didn't accomplish this because we are a group of really nice, laid-back people. We did this because the Holy Spirit gave us the ability to “bear with one another in love.� (Ephesians 4:2)

I'm continually realizing that there's something much deeper in our lives than ourselves. I've known this for a while, but too often I fall back into the mold that life is about me. I'm a blimp on the radar screen. I'm not demeaning our existences as individualsâ€"but I am trying to sift through the things of this world versus things of eternal significance.

All of the things that God has been teaching me came full circle on this trip. One of my favorite songs is “This World� by Caedmon's Call. Oddly enough, we sang this song two days before we left, and it encompasses what I experienced in Mississippi.

There's tarnish on the golden rule
And I wanna jump from this ship of fools
Show me a place where hope is young
And a people who aren't afraid to love

This world has nothing for me and this world has everything
All that I could want and nothing that I need

This world is making me drunk on the spirits of fear.
So when he says who will go, I am nowhere near.

And the least of these look like criminals to me
So I leave Christ on the street

This world has held my hand and has led me into intolerance
But now I'm waking up, but now I'm breaking up
But now I'm making up for lost time

Our mistrust of the church body too often holds us down with fear. We've all been hurt by others, we've all likely been let down by the church. The danger is that when we abandon the “ship of fools,� we turn to worldly things to fulfill us. We begin to rely on ourselves instead of one another.

This song ties into a primary roadblock in the lives of believers: fear. When God places our commission before us, and asks, “Who will go?� like in Isaiah 6, too often we run away from God, missing out on an opportunity to fulfill the plans that God has in store.

We begin to drift further and further away from the message of Christ, “and the least of theseâ€?â€"the orphans, the widows, and the poorâ€"bring only a spirit of judgment from Christians, instead of a spirit of mercy and grace that we so desperately need ourselves.
In the last stanza, the songwriter Aaron Tate comes to the realization that once we are broken before God, once we deny ourselves, we “wake up� to the world around us.

I pray this trip was a catalyst for me to begin by “making up for lost time.�

Aaron Carriere is a twentysomething who grew up in the church but was moved by his faith after he discovered it wasn’t about rules. He works in the publishing industry and loves music. You can contact him at aaroncarriere@gmail.com.

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