I have learned, over years of reading such reports, to slow down at the small paragraph near the end. That is usually where the gospel is hiding.
Here is this week's. In Sivasagar, near a crossing called Station Chariali, a Sikh house of worship opened its doors. About fifty Sikh families live in that town. Fifty. They have taken in close to two hundred displaced families and are cooking between fifteen hundred and two thousand meals a day in their community kitchen. And according to the reporting, they do not ask anyone's religion, caste, or community before handing over a plate. Neighbours from other communities have carried in rice and supplies. The men who manage the place have made one request of the government: please send medical staff.
I am a Christian minister, and those are not my brothers in doctrine. I will not pretend otherwise, and I will not be small about it either. When I see a kitchen running day and night for strangers whose names nobody wrote down, I recognize the shape of the thing. I have read the description before, from the lips of my Lord: "For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:" Our Saviour did not say, I was hungry and ye had strong feelings about hunger. He said meat. He said drink. He said ye took me in. Fifty families in a flooded town are doing that at two thousand plates a day, and I take it as instruction, not as an occasion to grade my neighbours.
But I would be a poor pastor if I left the water out. Seventy-five people did not survive it. Somewhere in Sivasagar tonight there are families for whom the receding of the river is not good news at all, because the river is going down and their people are not coming back. Whatever comfort I offer has to be able to sit in that room without lying.
So hear the promise as it is actually written: "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee." Notice what God does not say. He does not say the water will stay in its channel. He does not say there is no fire. He says through. He says I will be with thee. And when He says the rivers shall not overflow thee, He is not promising that water is harmless ΓÇö the graves in Assam answer that. He is promising that water is not sovereign. It can take a house, a harvest, a body. It cannot drown a soul that God has redeemed, and it does not get the last word over His people.
That is why I keep looking for the kitchens. Every pot of rice handed to a stranger in a flooded town is a small, stubborn announcement that the flood is not in charge. The grief is real, the fields are ruined, the accounting will take years ΓÇö and still, somebody cooked. Somebody unlocked a door. That is not sentiment. That is testimony.
And it puts a question to me, sitting dry. I do not need to find a river to obey what Christ said. Somebody within a mile of me is standing in water of another kind this morning: a diagnosis, a layoff, a coffin, a marriage coming apart. The obedience is the same, and so is the door.
Lord, be with all who pass through the waters in Assam tonight. Comfort the households counting an empty chair. Steady the hands of every stranger cooking for strangers. And make Your church the kind of house that unlocks its doors before it asks anybody's name. Amen.