Fires in California

Yesterday, upon discovering that Santa Barbara was burning, my co-worker J-Bird and I quickly relocated a group of our students up there who had planned to meet for a church history class right next to the heavy burn area.

This morning I discovered that the sky above my neighborhood was filled with smoke. It seems that major fires are burning (out-of-control) in the areas surrounding my city. The sky is dark enough that the light-sensitive lamps in people's yards are flickering on. The sun is an eerie, dull red disk high in the afternoon sky. Ash is falling everywhere.

My wife left this morning to visit her mother 35 miles to the northeast in a hospital where she was admitted last night. Her mother is 85 years old and her situation appears grave. Both major freeways that my wife would take home are closed because of wildfires. Across the street, my neighbors Kate and Tony are waiting for Kate's mother, who is living with them, to slip away. The hospice people thought she would pass away on Thursday, but she still lingers.

This is turning out to be quite a week. It is interesting how global issues lose their attraction when your local world is in turmoil. It causes me to stop and remember that, at its essence, life is much more about people than it is about issues. And we all live together in a very dangerous world where our only real hope is to trust in God and put our lives into his hands.

"You are a hiding-place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance." (Psalm 32:7)