Rolled in to Lagniappe Church last night, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. It was started by a pastor who grew up in this region, and came home after Katrina to help his family. Some of them died. He saw a deeper need beyond the physical suffering, and so he relocated his family to a FEMA trailer here, and began rebuilding, in every sense of that word.

I think we've established that I'm not a selfless person. I don't do this sort of thing easily, and I usually resent every part of it. I didn't want to come, but volunteered anyway. Do you ever do something like that?

So here I am, in an old warehouse that serves as the meal hall, office, and church, surrounded by missionaries and folding chairs and flies. The pastor, Jean Larroux, gave a sermon this morning, about the prodigal son, and how all of us are that boy, lured away from home by the empty promises of a world that betrays its lovers. And how God always runs to meet us. Don't forget that part. I'm sorry you missed it.

I was thinking last night, as I searched for a bunk and then stumbled across a gravel lot to the communal bathroom, how does a man abandon everything to move into a trailer in the midst of this devastation, this wrecked world that most of the country has now forgotten, all for the privilege of begging for labor and supplies so he can have the chance to show a city that God's love is more than words on a page? So much easier and safer to preach in an established church, I thought. So much cleaner. And with air conditioning, and a regular paycheck.

I wondered about it again this morning as we congregated in front of a little fold-up projector screen and sang hymns. I looked over at him as we sang, and saw him weeping at the words, and I realized: he really believes all that stuff in the Bible. He believes "Tend my lambs" wasn't just for Peter. He believes.

And so he came. And it occurred to me that he's thankful to be here. Interesting how the world looks when you glimpse it through someone else's eyes.