Yesterday afternoon, after devastating the Texas coast, the remnants of Hurricane Ike tore through Granville and the rest of Ohio, uprooting centuries old trees and downing power lines with hurricane force winds.  More than one million Ohioans lost power, and some of us may be waiting for up to a week for power to be restored.  In central Ohio where I live, 455,000 remain without power at this time.  The schools here are closed, and many of us are without water due to well and septic systems that rely on electricity to work.   

We lived through this kind of power outage before -- during the ice storm of 2004.  So neighbors are pulling together, checking on the elderly, and making sure everyone has enough supplies to last until the power is restored. The Granville college students are helping with water delivery and clearing the trees.  Local residents are pooling their cash and making trips to stores in Columbus that have opened to sell water, batteries, candles, and other necessities.  Churches are checking on their shut-ins and providing food to those without the necessary provisions. The local government turned out road crews with chain saws and tools to clear blocked streets and passages.  And in the one coffee shop that has electricity, residents are sharing the electrical outlets as we charge up our laptop computers, Blackberries, and cell phones.  So, all in all, our small community will weather this storm.

But I wondered last night, when I saw one gas station charging $5.99 per gallon for gasoline, what about those who are living on the edge here?  Are the folks in the trailer park at the edge of town okay?  Can they afford to pay for price-gouged gas?  Can they afford to replace an entire refrigerator and freezer worth of food that is now spoiled?  Do they have the extra cash to buy emergency supplies and food for a week until the power comes back on?  Can they take their child to work for the day, or a week, until the schools and childcares open again?   

One in six children in Ohio is hungry.  How many of those children will miss their government subsidized meals this week because the schools are closed and the meals cannot be prepared?  Poverty hurts -- and an unexpected emergency like a windstorm and a long term power outage makes poverty hurt even more by laying bare the continued economic disparity in our country -- and in my small town.   

These are the issues that propel me forward in my work to Vote Out Poverty.  These are the questions that drive me to ask pastor after pastor after pastor to host a Poverty Sunday this fall to raise the consciousness of parishioners in the pews about poverty.  These are the questions that had me participating by candlelight last night in a national conference call with Jim Wallis to Vote Out Poverty.  And these are the questions that have turned the Lord's Prayer into my plea: "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Please keep in prayer the families of the three people killed in Ohio last night during the windstorm, as well as the thousands and thousands in Texas and the Gulf Coast who were displaced by Hurricane Ike.  Please also pray: "The world now has the means to end extreme poverty; we pray we will have the will."

Rev. Virginia Lohmann Bauman lives in Granville, Ohio with her family, and she is the Ohio Field Director for Sojourners.