Teresa Herndon and her husband, Andrew, were in Las Vegas to see concerts by Blue Man Group and Shania Twain.  They hurried back to their home in Mayfield, Kentucky, when they learned that an EF4 tornado had struck their town on Friday night, December 10, 2021.  After their flight, they arrived at their home – or what was left of it – about 1:30 PM on Saturday, 16 hours after the twister struck this western Kentucky community.

The home that they had built in 1993, the one in which they raised their children, was in shambles.  As they observed what was left of their home, they noted that the place where they would have taken cover during the storm was destroyed.  They likely would not have survived the storm had they been at home.

There was something else that impacted the Herndons even more than the devastation that the tornado left behind.  It was something that they saw that positively impacted them and warmed their hearts.  It was the people that were there to help them.  “There were probably 100 to 125 of them,” Teresa said of the helpers who came to help clean up and salvage belongings.  “I did not call a single person. … These were my church friends, family, friends of my church friends, people I did not know.”

“When you read (in the Bible) about the type of person we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to represent Christ, that’s what I saw in my yard,” she said.

The tornado destroyed Teresa’s home and caused major damage to a business that she and her brother, Jason Fitzgerald, own.  But the tornado did not destroy her hope, her resolve to overcome, or her outward focus.  She views the ordeal as an opportunity for the love of Christ and His church to be demonstrated.

“It’s either going to make you weak or make you stronger,” she said of her tornado experience.  “I’m not going to let the devil get a hold of me.  My prayer is that one soul is saved from seeing the love shown by the church.” *

When we consider the cross of Christ, we see the terrible consequences of sin, spiritually akin to the devastation left by a tornado.  As Jesus suffered physical and spiritual agony on the cross, Satan may have thought he had won the war against God.  But three days later, after Jesus had paid the price for our sins (not His own), Jesus rose from the grave, defeating sin, death, and Satan.

God will save and give eternal life to those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  The blood that Jesus shed will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7-9).

On the cross, Jesus endured the fury of God’s wrath against sin so that we won’t have to.  In the aftermath of that “storm,” we are able to abide in the love and life that is found in Jesus, if we will only trust and obey Him.

-- David A. Sargent

* Information gleaned from “After Mayfield tornado, some stories inspire” by Bobby Ross, Jr. in The Christian Chronicle email newsletter (January 25, 2022), www.christianchronicle.org.

David A. Sargent, Minister

Church of Christ at Creekwood 
1901 Schillinger Rd. S.
Mobile, Alabama  36695

Archived issues of Living Water can be viewed and accessed from our website at: www.creekwoodcc.org