A 3-Year-Old in a Tutu

Good morning,

I watched a show the other night about the people who were hurt at the outdoor Sugarland concert, when the stage collapsed in a big wind and fell on the audience. One story was about a 3-year-old little girl who loved Sugarland and the lead female singer, Jennifer Nettles. She was so excited and right in front, dressed in all-pink, wearing a tutu. The security let her stand on the steps going up to the stage so she could see over the adults around her. She was so cute and all the people around her including her mom and two older sisters were making friends–just so excited for the concert to start.

Almost out of nowhere, a storm came up and they announced that the concert would start as soon as it passed and some might get wet but the show would go on. A minute later, a huge wind came in and toppled a huge temporary roof that was over the stage and it landed on part of the crowd. The 3-year-old little girl was hit in the arm, her mother was hit and her leg was broken. As the mother looked around she could see her little daughter just sitting still and not crying, but blood was all over her arm. She crawled to her and put her in her lap and just started yelling for help. A man who had been in front crawled through the mess and took off his shirt and made a tourniquet for her arm and just then a doctor who had been in the crowd with his daughter crawled into the collapsed mess and heard him yelling that he needed a tourniquet–a little girl was severely hurt.

The doctor looked at the mother and said, “We have to get her out now and to the hospital.” She just looked at him and said, “Go, save my baby.”  Now, this mother sent her child with a stranger. She still did not know where her other two daughters were and she was in bad shape herself.

Can you imagine? How would you cope if you didn’t believe in a God?

I was reading my Bible in the morning out in Colorado last weekend and I had to stop and start to underline how many times the phrase “comfort and encouragement” was used in the first 10 verses of chapter 1 in, 2 Corinthians 1:1-10 Amplified Bible (AMP)

Introduction

1 Paul, an apostle (special messenger, personally chosen representative) of Christ Jesus (the Messiah) by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

To the church of God which is at Corinth, and to all the ^[a]saints (God’s people) throughout Achaia (southern Greece):

² Grace to you and peace [inner calm and spiritual well-being] from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

³ Blessed [gratefully praised and adored] be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts and encourages us in every trouble so that we will be able to comfort and encourage those who are in any kind of trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. ⁵ For just as Christ’s sufferings are ours in abundance [as they overflow to His followers], so also our comfort [our reassurance, our encouragement, our consolation] is abundant through Christ [it is truly more than enough to endure what we must]. ⁶ But if we are troubled and distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted and encouraged, it is for your comfort, which works [in you] when you patiently endure the same sufferings which we ^[b]experience. ⁷ And our ^[c]hope for you [our confident expectation of good for you] is firmly grounded [assured and unshaken], since we know that just as you share as partners in our sufferings, so also you share as partners in our comfort.

⁸ For we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about ^[d]our trouble in [the west coast province of] Asia [Minor], how we were utterly weighed down, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life [itself]. ⁹ Indeed, we felt within ourselves that we had received the sentence of death [and were convinced that we would die, but this happened] so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. ¹⁰ He rescued us from so great a threat of death, and will continue to rescue us. On Him we have set our hope. And He will again rescue us [from danger and draw us near]…

The word comfort, if you didn’t count it, was 10 times!!

Our sweet little 3-year-old was helped to the hospital by the doctor and a cop who together crawled through the twisted metal, taking turns handing her back and forth over the rubble, got her to a hospital. When word got to the mother, who was taken to a different hospital, she refused to be helped and transferred to the hospital where her baby was going to be coming out of surgery. She then found out that her other two daughters were unharmed and with authorities. She then said, “I will take some pain meds now and you can fix me up.”

A supernatural comfort was over that mom. She knew that she had to trust strangers and trust God that all would be OK. She may not have known about 2 Corinthians 1:1-10, but you do now and you can trust in the word of God. He is for us and He loves us more than that mom loves her girls!

Love you, Teri