A Freshly Plucked Olive Leaf

Noah's family survived the flood. Then they waited. They spent months shut in a crowded ark, sent out birds that came back with nothing, and waited for ground that was safe to stand on. When the dove finally came back with one green leaf, nothing was rebuilt yet. But it was a sign that life was coming back.

A Freshly Plucked Olive Leaf is a 30-day devotional through the story of Noah for survivors of floods, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other disasters: for people in the first raw weeks, people living in a relative's spare room or a FEMA trailer, people fighting through paperwork and repairs, and people years out who still flinch when it rains. It is also for families, volunteers, and churches who walk with them. Along the way you'll follow Corrie Haskins, a 38-year-old home-health aide whose family climbed onto their roof when the Sallee River came through Ashby Ford, Tennessee, in the middle of the night, and Cyprien Batiste, a 74-year-old retired welder who spent a day and a half on his own roof in the Lower Ninth Ward during Hurricane Katrina and has led volunteer rebuild crews ever since. Their weekly talks carry them through a neighbor's death, a crowded trailer, a FEMA denial and appeal, a house dried to the studs, a contractor scam, a child's nightmares, a buyout offer, homecoming, nursing school, panic in a storm, a husband's hidden drinking, and a memorial by the river.