I’m not quite sure where this post is going: Will it be devotional, or will it be an Op-Ed? I suppose we’ll find out together. You see dear reader, I’ve spent way too many hours over the past week watching my home town burning, seeing the desperation and despair of the victims, while community leaders do a word dance on camera to avoid any responsibility for what is (still) happening. I think it’s still too soon for most of us to really have a handle on how this could happen and exactly where things went wrong― these are big questions, to be sure. Yet it does appear to be a certainty that officials were not prepared for what happened.

I’m having a hard time with that.

I was born, raised, and educated in the LA area, as was my father before me, and there is no place I would rather have grown up; in those days, it was an awesome place to live. I can recall vividly being in uni9versity taking physical geography, as the instructor detailed the very scenario that played out over this past week― we had to learn it for an Exam, along with preventative steps that need to be taken to avoid what has just happened. I went back and looked it up; I had physical geography in 1976, some 49 years ago.

This is where I must make an editorial decision regarding the direction this ramble will take.

We’ll be right back.

Thinking in progress… Thank you for your patience.

Here goes…

A great many people who are very competent gave warnings, and a number of them saw the familiar weather pattern develop and issued warnings in the days before the fires, but even then, many leaders did not heed those warnings. It also appears that many of those leaders had decided to cut back on emergency preparations in favor of other priorities in recent years, and those decisions have come back to haunt the city. Hopefully there will be a full, complete, honest, and fair investigation that will actually find the full and complete truth about what happened so that this may never happen again. Of course, it isn’t that the same weather pattern will never happen again, no, it happens every 10 or 15 years. Every time there are bad fires in more than one location at a time, but this level of destruction has never happened before, and that is what good management can minimize.

But then, I tend to be an optimist.

I’m sure that the community leaders in Los Angeles mean well. Certainly, none of them would have wanted something like this to happen on their watch. Sadly, meaning well isn’t enough, and without wise choices, things can fall apart quickly.

Yet, with all of this said, I believe that we can take heart in this: There is One whose management is always reliable, who is always faithful and true, who never dodges a fair but tough question, and who will always have our backs. Our hope is not in human institutions or human wisdom, and it is not in human goodwill, it lies instead in the very One who created all of us, who loves us, even when we aren’t being all that lovable, and who sent His One and Only Son to save us from sin, and death. We may be disappointed by human leaders and their mistakes, but our God will never disappoint us. This world is full of challenges. Some of these bring pain or sadness or mourning. Some are just plain unjust; our Lord never promised us an “easy button”. Yet, He does supply us with His strength, His wisdom, His courage, and the assurance of eternity with Him as His co-heir, and if you think about that, a great many of the issues we deal with in this life will seem pretty small by comparison to what lies ahead. I can only speak for myself, but I take comfort in that.