In 2007 I was caught in Bangladesh during Cyclone Sidr. After the storm passed I covered the wreckage and recovery. Here’s a web post from that time plus a radio documentary I produced. The photo features me shooting video of an aid worker in a very leaky boat.
This is Jacob’s land, where prayer is almost a contact sport. In Bangladesh, they wrestle with the Almighty. They weep, punch the sky, wave a fist, shake and rock back-and-forth. They all pray at once, voices of old and young rising like a wave, a torrent of sound that beats against the night.
Do they hammer at the doors of heaven because they understand the fragility of life? That with millions living on land where people shouldn’t live, prayer is the thread that weaves their thin fabric of hope.
Could it be that anyone who wrestles that hard with God comes away wounded? And that Bangladesh’s wound is that it is always in the eye of the storm? Could it be that, like Jacob, they will overcome…
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