Somebody called me yesterday and said to me, “Lightning never strikes twice. Yeah. Right.” I could only laugh. Some of you will remember that early on an August morning 13 years ago a car came crashing through my office wall at 45 miles an hour. Miraculously, I walked out unharmed. CPYU then went through the long process of a rebuild of that part of our building. I came out of it all with a great answer to that ice-breaker prompt, “Name something you’ve experienced that you guess nobody else in the room has.”
As of yesterday, I’ve now got an addendum to that answer because it’s now happened twice! Yesterday morning our CPYU staff arrived to what you see in the pictures. It seems that an overnight police chase ended in our office. Yes, lightening has struck twice!
While we don’t yet know many of the details regarding how this happened or what has happened to the driver, we do know that we are now facing a few months of disruption and some displacement at CPYU. The good news is that none of us were in the office at the time. If we had been, it would have been disastrous. And, since we’ve been through this before, there was disbelief on our part yesterday morning, but that was tempered by a complete absence of anxiety and a good dose of some laughter. We’re fine.
If you would, please pray for us. Here are some thoughts along with some ways to pray.
- I read the opening line of Psalm 115 this morning: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory.” Please pray that the outcome of this would be for our good and for God’s glory.
- Pray for the driver of the car. We do know he was hospitalized but we know nothing about his injuries. We do know he was running from the police. We don’t know why he was running. And, we do know that like all of us, he was running to someone. . . whether he knows that or not. We’re not sure where this will lead with him, but we hope and pray that God would be glorified and proclaimed through this.
- All we lost in this mess was a bunch of stuff. . . . computers, furnishings, electronics, hundreds of my books, a record collection, and we’re not sure what else until the restoration company gets in there with us today. We praise God that nobody else was hurt.
- While we lost a good portion of the interior of our building (walls, ceiling, carpet will all need to be replaced), our studio and server were untouched and functioning. . . as well as two of our offices with their workstations.
- We have insurance! Pray for a fair and complete settlement.
- Pray for our staff. This changes everything for our summer. Projects we had been planning to tackle will be put on hold. While operations won’t cease (our websites, radio, podcasts, publications. . . all that will go on!), much of our time, I’m sure, will be spent doing tasks related to recovery.
- Summertime is when we lay back a bit on travel and take some vacation time. Please pray that our staff would be able to get time off that’s needed. I suppose we’re being forced into it a bit!
God is sovereign over all! What a blessing to remember that in the midst of the disruptions that come our way in this broken world.
Will pray with you on these requests, Walt. Been meditating on Acts 5 the past couple of days. Love verse 38: “So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.”
God’s work will be accomplished.