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Beautiful Words Blog | Fire: It Equalizes By Pastor John Moropoulos | Gateway Christian Fellowship




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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