
The images have been almost unimaginable. Destruction of huge swaths of a city.
Buildings completely leveled or left as smoldering skeletons.
We are used to seeing these images. They are on the news whenever one cares to
watch them. It seems that there is always someplace that has been devastated by an
earthquake, hurricane or tsunami, or the horrors of war. But we are used to seeing it
someplace else, in another country, or more typically on another continent. We just
aren’t used to seeing it so close to home.
As we’ve seen the images of Los Angeles and its suburbs reduced to ashes, we are
struck by the strange uniformity of it. We see extraordinarily wealthy people impacted in the exact same way as those of lesser income and assets, the famous dealing with
same experience as the common and unknown.
I’m from Los Angeles, the east side. A little town called Montebello, right between East
LA and Whittier. Growing up in LA we all recognized the northwest side of the city as
the home of the wealthy and famous. A drive up California’s Pacific Coast Highway will
take you past some of the most magnificent homes one can see anywhere in the world, with views that take one’s breath away. On the east side we had Pasadena’s Orange Grove Boulevard with it massive mansions, but not even the Wrigley Mansion, now the headquarters of the Tournament of Rose Parade, could match those Malibu sunsets. The PCH was where the privileged few lived.
Tragically, some have allowed the wealth of those people to foster a callousness, as if
they don’t deserve the compassion that others in a similar situation would. But for so
many the fires that continue to wreck destruction in LA destroyed everything they had,
just as thoroughly as a fire would do to your house or mine. When everything is really
everything, it’s just that.
The point isn’t about relative wealth. It’s about the great equalizing power of fire. It
takes what it takes and leaves what it leaves. The name on the land title has no effect
whatsoever. The precious possessions lost are just as lost as if they belonged in a
home of much lesser means.
Which is where a great lesson for us can be found.
Please don’t see this as a trivialization of the ongoing situation. The situation in LA is
real and it is brutally traumatizing. This is a matter of seeing things as they are, before
our eyes get used to images.
Peter wrote of our faith being tested by fire (I Peter 1.7). Paul wrote of our works being
tested by fire (I Corinthians 3.13). I think that it is the impersonal thoroughness by
which fire works that make it such an effective test medium.
Again, the purpose here isn’t to draw our attention away from the immediate tragedy
that is occurring in Los Angeles and its neighborhoods, but to learn from it before our
thoughts move on.
Paul told the Corinthians that every man’s work will be tested. We would be wise to
take a moment and ask, "What will my house; what will the collective sum of my life’s
efforts look like on that day?"
Only that which is done for Christ will last.
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