I spent Fall Break in New Orleans, gutting houses and churches that had not been touched since Hurricane Katrina. Largely these places looked decent from the outside, besides weedy lawns and a broken window or two, but inside they were masses of mold and rot. You could see the waterline where the mildew splayed over the drywall. Pictures and possessions were strewn over floors tiled and carpeted. Appliances sat rusted and filled with insect colonies. It looked, felt, and smelled disgusting. In rooms with carpet, we had to shovel off the year-old mud on the surface and remove the carpet before we could dig out the ankle-deep sediment that lay beneath. Everything had to go; everything had been contaminated. Furniture, clothes, appliances, bathtubs, toilets, drywall, paneling, insulation, tiles, linoleum, baseboards, nails-- all of it mingling in a putrid heap by the curb, often sprawling across the entire front lawn.
In the last house I worked on I came across a wallet-sized picture of a couple who, I assume, were the homeowners. The snapshot must have been on the second floor, since it was undamaged and the water had submerged the first story. In the picture they were carefully dressed and smiling.
I was impressed with a sense of the fragility of life. As I shoveled muck I thought about my home, and what it would look like in the same situation. It was hard to realize, but the houses used to be nice, used to smell good, used to be inhabited by more than nuclear albino roaches. It can all go away with one storm.
We met people who even through disaster had such joy. It was apparent that the destruction of the foundations of their homes had not affected the foundations of their faith. maybe they used to be defined by their possessions; maybe the storm shook them more than I could see. I don't know. But a year after Katrina, living in miniscule FEMA trailers, they were cheerful and warm and generous.
I learned a lot from them, and from the Service International staff we worked with. They were all volunteers, people who sacrificed their home lives to come and direct a bunch of hyper college kids with sledgehammers. They stayed when we left. Our Fall Break is over, but their work continues.

I am tired. Fall Break was hard work, but the week since I've been back has been more stressful than any physical labor. God is good, though, and for some reason He still loves me.
Human beings are the crowning glory of the Creation of Omnipotent God, and yet by and large we are a thick, pigheaded lot who can't see what's good for us when it's smacking us upside the head.