Through the fire

January 2025.

Friends, it’s been a terrifying, grief-filled time here in the Los Angeles area these last 11 days. Many people have lost everything they owned in these devastating fires. Emergency overload and catastrophe fatigue are weighing on souls. For the people who were directly affected, the initial horror of the fires has morphed into urgent challenges: where to take refuge, and how to carry on with life’s responsibilities with no practical basics of living in place. My friends who are in the midst of it tell me it’s like The Hunger Games out there…exhausted, frantic people all trying to find housing and necessities at the same time.

Just thinking about it hurts my heart, and probably yours as well. What can I even say of all of this grief? I know that the last thing suffering people need is to have their pain minimized, or for others to assume they know what the sufferers are going through. I can only imagine, and cry with them.

When we’re overwhelmed, the Bible tells us to pour out our hearts to God. To lament with Him, to Him; to acknowledge our grief and fear and devastation to Him. He’s big enough to handle it. He wants our honesty. He already knows our condition; why pretend we’re ok when we’re not? Healing can start when we articulate what we’re feeling, and bring it into the light with Jesus.

“The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18