The Mayor Who Moved His Desk to the Flood Zone

When Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston in August 2017, the wealthiest neighborhoods dried out within days. Insurance adjusters arrived. Contractors lined up. But in Kashmere Gardens — a predominantly Black neighborhood on the city's northeast side — families waded through contaminated water for weeks with no help in sight.

That is when County Judge Lina Hidalgo, newly elected and barely thirty, did something her predecessors had not. She moved disaster relief operations directly into the forgotten neighborhoods. She redirected FEMA resources to zip codes that had never received them. She stood in living rooms where mold climbed the walls and told families, "You are not invisible to this office."

Psalm 72 paints a portrait of what authority looks like when wielded by the righteous. The king described here does not simply rule — he rescues. "He will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help." His justice falls like rain on a mown field, soaking into the places most parched and exposed. The nations bring tribute, yes, but the measure of this king's greatness is not the gold of Sheba. It is whether the poorest mother in the most overlooked neighborhood knows that someone in power remembers her name.

Every earthly leader who bends toward the vulnerable offers us a faint echo of the Kingdom the Almighty is building — where no cry goes unheard and no life is counted cheap.