The news out of Oklahoma is grim.

A huge tornado has ripped through Moore, Okla., a town just south of Oklahoma City. News of the latest twister reminds me of a tour my wife and I took through that very town not long after the previous killer storm blew it apart.

We were visiting with the parents of a former colleague of mine. My former colleague is a native of Moore. His parents still lived there in 1999 when we visited them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Bridge_Creek_%E2%80%93_Moore_tornado

We went on a drive through the stricken neighborhoods. Fortunately, our hosts’ home wasn’t damaged by that storm. Incidentally, they’ve since moved out of there and are now living in McKinney, north of Dallas.

But the damage of that 1999 storm was incomprehensible. Entire blocks were leveled. Adjacent to them were neighborhoods that remained intact. The Almighty has this strange way of guiding these storms. Go figure.

We were told of how one high school had been evacuated and how the students were forced to attend class in a rival school while their own campus was repaired.

The city eventually repaired itself from that terrible event more than a dozen years ago.

Now this. By all accounts, today’s disaster seems as ghastly as that earlier one.

And all this just highlights the power over which we mere human beings have no control.

We’re left now just to lend a hand when and where we can and, of course, offer prayer to the very God that delivered this horror to Moore.