I’ve just watched an LA TV reporter in the process of giving a live report from his car come across an isolated home where a small, hungry wildfire was creeping up the hillside toward it. He stopped his report and went to get help. Ten minutes later, he returned with a fire truck crew, and the flames were put out. Had the reporter not intervened, the fire would have reached the house in no time, and destroyed it.
A thousand such stories are filling the airwaves here this week in LA. What the tornado is to the Midwest, what the blizzard is to New England, what the hurricane is to the Southeast, so the wildfire is to southern California.
It’s the one weather event that gathers people around their TVs, creates havoc, closes schools and fills everyone’s heart with dread.
It’s hard for people back East to fully appreciate what a tinderbox we sit on here. Sure I love to occasionally post a sunny 7-day forecast map on social media to playfully rub it in to my friends and family suffering elsewhere. But all that warmth and sunshine comes at a cost.
Los Angeles has not received meaningful rain for months. This is after all basically a desert. So every tree, hillside and lawn is covered with vegetation that snaps off in your hand like corn flakes.
Then when you add the arrival of a Santa Ana wind event, where straight-line winds up to 60 or 70mph pour through the eastern mountain passes like an invading army for days on end, all it takes is one tiny spark set off by a cigarette butt or hot exhaust pipe and a conflagration is born.
I’ve been bullied by winds atop Mount Washington and cowered before the onrush of a Category 1 hurricane. I’ve shivered in awe as a blizzard shook my house like a rag doll. But Santa Ana winds are unlike any of these. Walk outside when they’re blowing and it reminds me of having your face too close to the oven when you open it to check on the cake.
With most weather disasters, you have some semblance of a warning. Sure, there’s a randomness as to which houses the tornado picks off, but people can still be prepared that it’s coming. Not so much here. You’ve all heard stories by now of people who are roused from their beds and given literally two or three minutes to flee for their lives.
That’s what scary about this current fire event. We live 20 miles east of LA and so far have been unaffected by what’s happening. But we live in the shadow of a ridge of 3,000-foot foothills wearing a sweater of dry brush, with a large open field across the road. There’s no reason at all why that 2:00am knock-on-the-door couldn’t happen to us.
Moments like this remind me of two great truths of Life: the truths of Stewardship and Faith.
On the one hand, God calls us to live as good stewards. That is to say, we are to live responsibly and wisely. We are to look at the world around us, observe its opportunities and threats, and then make choices accordingly. God created us to “rule” under his “Rule”.
I see stewardship at work all around me in this fire. Thank goodness for firefighters, and community leaders, and media outlets and emergency protocols. Thank goodness for insurance and fire detectors and hospitals. If you live through the pain of enough wildfires, good stewards say to themselves, “This is the world we live in. We need to take steps to try to contain the suffering an event like this brings.”
Life just runs better when you remember that you are a steward. (And if you haven’t noticed it, God does not save us from pain caused by our negligence or ignorance.)
God calls us to live as good stewards. That is to say, we are to live responsibly and wisely. We are to look at the world around us, observe its opportunities and threats, and then make choices accordingly. God created us to “rule” under his “Rule”.
But then operating alongside of Stewardship must be Faith. Life also runs better when we recognize that there is a “Life” beyond this “life”. Despite all our efforts to create a buffer against all disaster, and shore up our existence to ward off all threats, it just can’t be done. Not one of us gets out of this thing alive: rich, poor, Republican, Democrat. (Even Paris Hilton and Lionel Richie had to evacuate their homes yesterday.)
If we choose to live in fear of every threat, and frantically scramble about trying to keep it far away, we will never find true peace.
“Here we have no lasting city,” Scripture tells us. And so if we live only for this life, we will have missed the very purpose for why we are here in the first place. Which is to love God and love our neighbor.
It would absolutely suck to get that knock on the door. (As good stewards, each one of us should think that one through in advance. What would I take? Are all the photos on the Cloud? Are the pet carriers nearby? Where would I stay on Night #1? Would I have access to money? It would mean months and months of heartache and hassle.)
But I’d like to think that my soul is so bolstered by Faith that my world wouldn’t crumble should that happen. That I’d be able to reach for God – who is a “very present help in trouble” – and feel his fingers around mine.
If we choose to live in fear of every threat, and frantically scramble about trying to keep it far away, we will never find true peace.
Last night my phone went off. It was an emergency message which read:
Strong winds overnight creating extreme fire danger. Stay alert. Listen to authorities.
(I don’t know why, but I just thought of little Newt saying to Ripley in “Aliens”, “They only come at night.” But I digress.)
Every weather disaster, every political tumult, every harbinger of economic whitewater up ahead should set off a similar warning in our hearts. Storms are coming. How should we prepare? Jesus told us:
“Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” (Matt.7:24).
