I pulled out my thesaurus to help me describe how I am feeling. Am I heartsick? Brokenhearted? Heavyhearted? It does have to do with my heart, but I think I will settle on “sad.” Although I now live on the other side of the country, my heart has been in Los Angeles this past week. The thing that is making me sad is the terrible devastation caused by the fires. Los Angeles is where I grew up and is probably the place I most consider to be my home. So, when I turn on the television and see familiar sites in ashes, I am sad. An interactive map confirmed that two of the homes I have lived in were under mandatory evacuation orders. That’s sad.
I do know the feeling of walking into a devastated home, although mine was devastated by a tornado and not by fire. I could get out the thesaurus again, but I think I will just use the word “hopeless.” Where can we find hope when everything we owned is gone?
Unfortunately, the people of Los Angeles are not the first to lose everything. In ancient Israel, the prophet Habakkuk complained to God about the state of the nation. He was told that things would get even worse. The only hope God offered was that “the righteous shall live by faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4) Israel was destroyed, but Habakkuk survived by faith. He wrote, “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor the fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” (Habakkuk 3:17-19)
May Habakkuk’s wisdom give us hope for tomorrow.