Donna Partow

A freight-train full of roaring lions. 

At a distance but closing in fast.

That’s what it sounded like.  Then the floor beneath me started shaking.  The entire room began swaying from side-to-side.  As I stood on the 18th floor of the Ala Moana Hotel on Oahu, my first thought was that I was imagining things. Then it occurred to me that I was physically ill and about to pass out.  But as my 10-year old daughter sat up in the bed, looking equally alarmed, I realized we were in the middle of an earthquake.  6.7 on the Richter scale.  The largest to hit the Hawaiian Islands in more than 50 years.

Miraculously, God enabled me to remain uncharacteristically calm.  Tara and I quickly dressed and headed out to the hallway.  Before we made it to the stairwell, all the lights went out and we were engulfed in darkness.  Feeling our way down the stairs, we soon encountered a growing throng of frightened hotel guests.  I missed a step, twisting my ankle, but we pressed onward, inching our way through the dark, finally making it down to the street below.  Just when we didn’t think matters could get worse, we stepped outside into pouring rain.    

I struck up a crisis-driven friendship with a doctor and her husband who agreed to let us hop in their car and we drove away from the towering buildings.  We figured if strong aftershocks hit, we wanted to be as far from concrete and glass as we could possibly get.  After about thirty minutes, I looked at my watch and announced, “I’m scheduled to speak back at the hotel in five minutes!”  We decided the worst was behind us and the couple agreed to drive me back to the Ala Moana where, sure enough, many of the retreat attendees were standing outside wondering what to do.

I had previously been in several situations where a conference was disrupted by fire alarms, but in every case, it turned out to be a false alarm.  That was distressing enough.  This was the real thing.  A real-life disaster.  Call it an act of nature or an act of God, people were shaken, reminded once again that life doesn’t always turn out the way we plan.  We had all been shaken with a fresh realization that there are forces at work more powerful than us, more powerful than our agenda and beyond our ability to control.

I think that’s a good thing.  It’s so easy to deceive ourselves into thinking we’ve got the world figured out.  Every once in a while, God is kind enough to let everything that can shake, shake.  Whatever is left standing is a foundation worth building on.  Whatever falls was nothing but a cheap substitute for the real thing.

The hotel staff set votive candles along the floor, through the lobby, up the stalled escalators, guiding the way to our second-floor conference room, where a continental breakfast awaited those of us attending the  Salvation Army Pacific Region women’s retreat.  It also lit the way for everyone else who was frightened, hungry and desperate for their first cup of coffee.  People began streaming in.  Pandemonium doesn’t begin to describe it.  Un-phased by what I was very tempted to consider an unwelcome intrusion into our program, the conference director, Maj. Jonnette Mulch, simply smiled and said, “We’re the Salvation Army.  This is what we do.  We feed people.”  Then she started singing.  And she kept on singing.  And the women sang.  And they kept on singing.

We sang “This Little Light of Mine” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”  We sang “Shout to the Lord” and dozens of old praise choruses.  I delivered a short message on what it means for Christians to be a light in the darkness.  Ironically, that was my planned message, even though I hadn’t planned to deliver it by candlelight!  A woman pulled out her ukulele and we sang some more.  A hotel guest walked up and started drumming along, then shared how much our impromptu church service meant to him.  Others expressed the same sentiment.  We welcomed everyone who entered in, offering them breakfast and a word of encouragement.  We laughed, we cried, we prayed, we hugged and we sang.  My daughter Tara went around the room hugging people who looked like they needed hugs and giving away hand-made bookmarks she sat making by candle-light.  She even did cartwheels to entertain small children whose parents came into the room, wondering what all the singing and laughing was about.

A group of Polynesian women from Maui performed a hula as they sang praise to God.  Women from the Marshall Islands, many of whom never have electricity anyway, got up to worship God in their own language and with their own form of dance.  An African-American woman belted out Amazing Grace like she meant it with all her heart.  And she did.  We all did.  We knew we served an amazing God and that we were part of something amazing.  We had witnessed the power of God.  We knew it.  Everyone in the room knew it, even those who did not yet know God personally. 

We had experienced the power of God.  Not in the earthquake, but in the aftermath.  His power was shown not in what was shaken, but in what was not: our faith, our hope and our love.  Those three things remained.

America is experiencing an economic earthquake.  No matter what anyone tells you, the Bible does NOT promise believers we’ll be spared the earthquakes of life.  Quite the contrary.  Isaiah 43 says WHEN you pass through the fire, WHEN you go through the waters, WHEN you face challenging situations, God will be there in the midst of it.

What will set us apart as Christians in the days to come is not what happens to us, but our unshakeable confidence in God no matter what happens.

If God has been with you in the middle of one of life’s earthquakes, I’d love to hear your story.

Blessings
Donna

You’ve just read an excerpt from Becoming a Vessel of God’s Power.  If you liked what you read, why not order a copy today?