A 911 call alerted first responders that a man was slowly wading out into San Francisco Bay, inching his way to ending his life there. Soon a group of firefighters - along with a crowd of 75 people - were watching as this desperate man went deeper and deeper, occasionally looking back at the shore. They stood there for an hour.

The land is flat around Joplin, Missouri. Now much of the town has been leveled by an F-5 tornado. So it's just heartbreaking devastation as far as the eye can see.

But there's one thing still standing. A reporter commented on it this morning as the camera scanned across the sea of wreckage. It's a cross. His words went right to my heart –

A lot of people I know of have friends in Joplin, Missouri. So they're feeling the unimaginable devastation and loss there on a personal level. It's always that way when a disaster has a face.

Many people in the region are mobilizing to help in some way. The stories emerging from the rubble are touching all of us deeply. And even causing many to rethink their own response to frequent tornado warnings.

I thought Humpty Dumpty was just a nursery rhyme. You know, that big egg who sat on a wall, but had a great fall. Turns out he's got a lot of company these days. Sitting on a high wall. Smashed by a big fall.

It's been an awful spring for tornadoes. Again, our news coverage is filled with those all-too-familiar images of a city leveled and a death toll rising. This time, it's Joplin, Missouri.

The image they keep showing over and over came from a cell phone video shot in a convenience store, literally as the tornado was tearing that store apart. Miraculously, everyone survived. But they didn't think they would.

I watched the news today. They were talking about doomsday. And it made me sad. Not because I'm nervous about Jesus fulfilling all His prophecies about earth's final chapter. But because millions are laughing about something they desperately need to take seriously.

When it's man versus lots of water, you know the water's often going to win. Oh, we've built dams and levees and water management systems. But sometimes - like now along the Mississippi - there's just too much water.

It all depends on the levees now. So many Americans have been watching record high flood waters rising all around them this week. Hoping the wall between them and all that water is high enough to hold it back.

It would be crazy for some town to suddenly say, "Uh-oh. We'd better build a wall here. Fast." No, it's too late when the waters are surging. You've got to build your walls high before the flood comes.

I still remember at least one line of poetry from high school. "Water, water everywhere." For lots of folks, that's not poetry right now. It's their town...their neighborhood...their house. The rivers are overflowing and backing up into every creek and stream they're connected to. It's a mess.

Honest, we didn't mean to be in northern Kentucky on Kentucky Derby weekend - but obviously thousands of people did. In trying to avoid flooding as we traveled, that's exactly where we managed to be. So there we were in the middle of rampant Derby Fever. No, I didn't bet on anybody, and I refuse to wear one of those floppy hats.