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Coast Guard swimmer rescues 165 in deadly Texas floods · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Greetings, it's Tuesday, July the eighth, twenty twenty five.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Tenison forums, daily article podcast.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, new rating to days daily article, authored by co-founder and CEO Dr. Jim Denison.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Shortly after I published yesterday's daily article, Camp Mystic confirmed that at least twenty-seven campers and counselors were killed in flash floods last Friday with ten children and one counselor still missing.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: As of this morning, the death toll across the area has now climbed to at least one hundred and four people, the massive search continues for survivors and victims.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are continuing to see tragic stories of those lost, such as Chloe Childress, a recent high school graduate who was set to attend the University of Texas that asked in this fall.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was co-president of our High School's Honor Council, Rand Varsity Cross Country, and founded a club devoted to helping senior citizens.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her death is a devastating loss to all who knew her and to the world she would have served so well.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other heart-breaking news, the bodies of two sisters from Dallas, ages thirteen and eleven, were found fifteen miles from where their cabin was swept into the river.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their hands were locked together.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are just too of so many stories so grievous that our minds and hearts feel overwhelmed with unspeakable sorrow.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, heroic stories are emerging as well.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Emma Fultz of Alexandria, Louisiana has been a counselor at Camp Mystic for three years and helped evacuate fourteen of her campers to safety.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jonathan McComb, who lost his wife and children in a two thousand fifteen flood in whimperly Texas, is one of hundreds of volunteers helping search for victims.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Petty Officer Scott Ruskin, a Coast Guard swimmer, rescued one hundred and sixty-five people at Camp Mystic.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So here's the question, if they did all they could do to rescue victims, why didn't our omnipotent God do all his power enables him to do to prevent this tragedy from happening?
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Bible says of our Lord in Psalm one hundred and four verse ten.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: You make springs gush forth in the valleys.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: They flow between the hills.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not only does God make the waters, but He can still control them today.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Savior who calmed the stormy sea of Galilee and marked four verse thirty nine.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could have done the same on the Guadalupe River last Friday.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Christians believe our father to be all loving, all knowing, and all powerful.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: When tragedy strikes, we need ways to trust him when we don't understand his ways.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what we must not do.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: We must not settle for easy answers to innocent suffering.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are not only the wrong answers, they're the opposite of the hope we need today.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Seculars who consider faith in God your relevant or outdated, will obviously dismiss the question.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Others will reject Christianity or deny God's omniscience or his omnipotence.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, in the face of tragedy, most of us do not question God's existence, knowledge or power, so we're left only to question his love.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We love people enough to do all we can to help them, especially at times like this.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: If God does not follow suit, it must be because He does not love them enough to do so, or so we fear.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We would never say this out loud, but it is the whispered out at the back of our grieving hearts.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have often quoted CS Lewis's response to the death of his wife from cancer.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not that I am, I think, in much danger of ceasing to believe in God.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The conclusion I dread is not so there's no God after all, but so this is what God's really like to see yourself no longer.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, if we deny God's love power or knowledge, we quote and quote solve our problem by creating a greater problem, rather than settling for easy answers that offer no hope, let's consider three pathways to faith today.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first is rational.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: If God is the supreme being, referencing Revelation four verse eight,
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Circumstances cannot make him less or more than he is.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: In either case, he would no longer be unchangingly supreme, as noted by Malachi three verse six.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, nothing that happened last Friday can make him any less the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent king of the universe.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we are finite and fallen, our minds by definition cannot understand his mind and ways affirmed by Isaiah fifty five versus eight and nine.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because he is all loving, all knowing, and all powerful, his character requires him to redeem all he allows according to Romans eight twenty eight.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: We may never understand such redemption on this side of eternity, but one day we will fully know what we only know in part today, promised in First Corinthians, Thirteen, verse twelve.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if we allow the question of innocence suffering to drive us from God, we turn from the source we need when we need in most.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: The greater our pain, the more we need our great physician.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: The second pathway is practical.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Bible does not always tell us all we want to know, but it does tell us all we need to know.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: For those who are suffering, understanding why last Friday's tragedy occurred may be less relevant than responding to it in practical ways.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: By praying for them and helping them financially and in other ways, we become an instrument of the grace they need.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the more we serve God, the closer we draw to Him and find the hope and help of His Spirit.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The third pathway to faith today is intuitive.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: All relationships require a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we choose to believe that God is who we hope him to be, and trust him with our questions, doubts, and pain, we experience his presence in such a transforming way that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, promised in Philippians four of our seven.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: For more on coping with this tragedy, please listen to the podcast I recorded yesterday with Dr. Mark Termin,
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why does God allow disasters like the Texas Hill Country floods?
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Find a link to it in today's daily article podcast episode notes.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's close with this.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many of you have your own stories of unexplained suffering as do I. If you have chosen to continue believing in the God who believes in you from a second Corinthians one verse four, you can now comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you live where the floods have devastated so many, you know your mission field.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you do not, you nonetheless know someone who needs the sustaining grace you have experienced.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can now be the hands and feet of Jesus in the broken world he died to save.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Beauty for brokenness, hope for despair.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lord, in your suffering world, this is our prayer, read for the children, justice, joy, peace, sunrise to sunset, your kingdom increase.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Will you help answer his prayer today?