Fire!

The dominating news in SoCal this past weekend has been fire. Fires have raged in Montecito, near Santa Barbara, in Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley, and in Yorba Linda in Orange County. The skies have been brownish, and the smell of grass fire hangs in the air. The moonrise has been orangish, but the sunsets have been spectacularly brilliant with a bright reddish-orange sun againts the backdrop of dark clouds of smoke. It feels like the end of the world.

The prophet Joel said, "The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD." (Joel 2:31)

And I am sure it feels like the end of the world to those who have been caught in the fire zones. To watch one's home burn, and one's neighborhood burn, and to see the sky filled with fire and smoke, well, who cannot help but think of the end of all things?

The Los Angeles Times has some spectacular pictures of the conflagrations going on around us. Orange County Pictures. Montecito Pictures. This picture to the right shows several palm trees igniting, and it looks eerily like fireworks, with showers of sparks raining down on the ground below them.

Several of our members, as well as Pastor Conner, attended Westmont College, and so our interest in what happened at Westmont is high. Also our former receptionist, Tabitha, is living right near Westmont. Westmont's web site is down, but a local photographer has posted some of the devastating pictures from the campus, here.

It is quite sad to see some of these gorgeous homes going up in flames. Homes that people have worked years to build and buy and furnish. And yet, in a matter of moments, all that work can be lost. I think of all the family pictures, the souvenirs from trips, the childhood memories and scrapbooks that are still in that house, burning up with the rest. Pieces of life. Gone.

I do not want to minimize the suffering and the shock, but Jesus did say,

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

I am reminded of a story from my college years. My friend, Sue, went home for Thanksgiving. With all the children grown and gone, her parents bought a new home, and had furnished it with all the nicer things they had always wanted. When Sue got "home", she encountered all sorts of new rules. "Don't touch that!" "Don't put your feet there?" "What are you doing? That couch isn't for sitting on!?"

As she drove away from her parents' home after a thoroughly miserable weekend, Sue got to thinking and praying. She felt that her normally stable and down-to-earth parents had been abducted by aliens! She prayed that God would show them the error of their ways, and restore some sort of sanity to her parents.

When she got back to her apartment, many hours away (in the days before cell phones), Sue had a message on her answering machine. It was her parents. She called them back at the number they had left, and heard that the new house, and all that was in it, had burned to the ground when Sue left. Evidently some faulty electrical wiring. Her parents were quite shaken and upset, but mostly apologetic for becoming so focused on the stuff, that they had lost sight of what was really important. Sue hung up the phone, and vowed never to pray again!

This one final picture just breaks my heart but also gives me hope. It is a young boy and his dog. I am assuming that he is sitting on the remnants of his former home. The boy looks sad, and the dog looks puzzled. The boy is hugging the dog, perhaps to comfort his dog, or perhaps to be comforted by his dog. Perhaps both.

Amidst the human wreckage of life, we should be there to comfort others in their losses, just as God is always there to comfort us in our losses.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

Please pray with us, for those who have been affected by the fires, and for those brave men and women who are fighting these fires. [JS]