Our hearts and prayers go out to the citizens of LA County. They also go out daily to everyday people, who through actions or no actions on their part, find themselves and their loved ones separated temporarily from each other. Famine, destruction, petulance and death have forever been part of the human condition dating back to the very first human beings. A short list is given below, so we have perspective. Our times are not unique, but our understanding and discernment that helps to give us perspective are unique. There are philosophical and theological questions to be asked and answered. Recent generations, as technology has offered us better answers to the events below, have come to believe that within ourselves we can stop “bad things from happening to good people”.
We at best can only trust in God, and hope that we can control our surroundings in ways that will protect our families and friends. Because Man is man, we will forever build houses made of “straw and on land made of sand”. Heck, I have built my own home in a flood plain in Garden City and I worry every spring that what happened in LA can happen in our little town. Only God knows. Just as scary is the fact that the Garden City Fathers can be just as reckless in exercising their duty to WE THE PEOPLE as the City Fathers in LA and the State government of California have been in exercising their fiduciary duties to protect citizens and their property..
One other point is that grief and the pain of loss appear to reach an emotional limit. When I have been at the bedside and seen a family grieve for their 5-year-old daughter who has just died of cancer, or a family grieve for their 18-year-old daughter who died in a car accident the day after she graduated from high school, I can’t imagine even feeling such pain, but the pain in me is unsurmountable even though I am a bystander.
One cannot help but ask if a loving God created a loving world, why is their pain?
C. S. Lewis offers several answers. I will paraphrase his commentary in THE PROBLEM WITH PAIN: Where there is love there has to be pain because when we are separated from love—familial love or the love of God, the separation creates pain.
The loss of a home, of family treasures, the loss and separation from memories and traditions that touch our hearts as we walk through our libraries and living rooms and dining rooms is painful—but not tragic. The separation from a loving relationship, either from a family member or friend or most assuredly from God is the true tragedy. A family from Pacific Palisades who had just lost their home and everything in it—except the statue of the Blessed Virgin in their garden, was featured on Fox News Sunday. Four generations gathered in front of the statue and prayed, Prayed in thanksgiving for each other. They prayed in gratitude for the times they had shared together. They prayed for strength to move forward with their lives. They sang the Ava Maria in dedication to God’s great gift of Jesus and His Mother. Things don’t really matter—houses, cars, luxury yachts, or even statues of Mary or a Cross around our necks or billions of dollars in assets, are precisely what God asks us not to love. They only matter if they bring us closer to HIM. They must have a purpose that is not intrinsic to themselves. A gold Crucifix on a chain is worth no more than a tin Cross if we aren’t reminded as we wear them of what they represent.
C. S. Lewis tells us:
“Pain insists on being attended to… God whispers in our pleasures, He speaks in our conscience, but he shouts to us in pain. It is His megaphone to a death in our world” And why do we need to be roused? Because we believe that all is well. We make ourselves into our own gods—can we all say Gnosticism, humanism, or progressive socialism? We believe that our rules are just as valid as His,
He has spoken through us across the ages. Just a few of hundreds of examples I list below. He has spoken to billions of people in billions of ways. WE must take time to listen. There is a way. We are not our own God. Watch out what we make into false Gods. Love God and love each other. Everything else is “fluff”.
Flood The flood of Noah’s time covered all the earth, even higher than the mountains (Genesis 7:10-24).
Fire “The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, the earth and its works will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10-13).
Earthquake “Then God’s voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Once more I will shake not only the earth but also heaven'” (Hebrews 12:25-28, Isaiah 2:19 NKJV, cf Matthew 27:51).
Volcano “The mountains melt beneath him and the valleys split apart, like wax before the fire…” (Micah 1:4 NIV, Psalm 97:5).
Whirlwind “When your dread comes like a storm and your destruction like a whirlwind…” See Wisdom’s warning (Proverbs 1:27-30).
Hailstorm One of the plagues that God sent upon Egypt through Moses, was the worst hailstorm Egypt had ever experienced (Exodus 9:23-26).
Famine Joseph said to Pharaoh, “All the abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten, and the famine will devastate the land” (Genesis 41:28-36, cf Acts 11:28).
Plague “The LORD sent venomous snakes among the people, and many of the Israelites were bitten and died” (Numbers 21:4-9).
Epidemic God told Moses, “Festering boils will break out on man and beast”.
If tragedy brings us closer to God, then it ceases to be tragedy. Just maybe the events in LA this past week, will bring millions of people closer to God
I pray for another GREAT AWAKENING Maybe the fires are a beginning—not an end.