Am I Prepared?

In recent days many tragic stories have come out of California. Stories of heartache and loss as lives have been cut short, homes have burned to the ground and thousands of acres of countryside have been scorched.

Am I Prepared?

Amid this chaos, though, one remarkable story caught my eye.

A picture published by an online newspaper showed a row of blackened, burnt-out shells, sad reminders of the homes which once stood there. But there was one exception. Amid the devastation was a luxurious mansion, gleaming white and seemingly unaffected. To quote the article itself: “In a scene that could have been plucked from a disaster movie, there is one home that appears to be standing alone, untouched, amidst a sea of smouldering ruins.”[1]

The house belongs to a businessman, one who has made his fortune in, of all things, rubbish. He has taken one man’s trash and literally made it his treasure. His aim in building such a home was to protect it from the sea, just a few metres away, and from the earthquakes which are part of life in that Pacific State.

The effort which he put into disaster-proofing his home are remarkable – concrete and stone walls, a fireproof roof and concrete pilings which were embedded fifty feet into the rock. These protections ensured that when the fires, driven by fierce winds, consumed all around, his home stood fast.

As I write I am reminded of a story in the Bible which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, told about two men; you can find it in Matthew chapter 7 verses 24-27. One man, with a desire for speed, and perhaps with a disinclination for following advice, builds a house on the sand. Sand, by its very nature, is fluid and shifting and so it will be no surprise to learn that almost as soon as the storm bursts, with its rain and wind, this house falls flat.

The second man is much more sensible. He finds rock, he digs into it and, having established firm foundations, builds a house that is meant to last. No amount of rain or wind is going to destroy such a house.

What is the point of such a story? I think it is safe to say that it is not about design or construction, nor is it about houses at all; rather, it is an easily understood lesson about building life on a firm foundation. In fact, Jesus begins the parable by saying: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine [referring to what is often called The Sermon on the Mount] and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (v.24 ESV). It is not about protecting my home against floods, or even against raging wildfire, but about ensuring that when everything around me fails my life doesn’t collapse with it.

Everything that we can see, and touch is temporal. One day this world will end. One day the temporal will give way to the eternal. Am I prepared for such a day? If everything around me is consumed with fire, have I prepared myself in time so that amid the blackened and charred remains what I have built will stand firm?

The only way to be prepared is to build my life upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Over the next few weeks, the stories coming out of California may be about how certain things have been “saved”. That is a good Bible word, and is often used, not about physical things, but about our eternal souls. In Acts 4:12 (ESV), the Apostle Peter says: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14272575/trash-tycoon-david-steiner-reveals-malibu-house-survived-la-fires.html