You can see it in your mind, the chimney of what had been a house. You see that chimney, the only thing standing after the wildfires swept through the neighborhood, destroyed homes and devastated lives. You see couples rummaging through what had been their family room, their kitchen, their life. Were they able to save at least a few family photos? Said one father, “It’s going to be hard to tell them (his children) that they have no clothes or toys.”
John James and Russell Friedman wrote The Grief Recovery Handbook, a book to help people dealing with death, divorce, and other losses (Harper, 1998). “In our formative years, an overwhelming emphasis is placed on learning how to acquire things in order to make life successful and happy.” It’s not just childhood. What message are all those commercials planting in you? “While we have learned much about acquiring things, we have precious little accurate information on what to do when we lose them” (p. 24).
But the little information we do have is very precious. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
That lonely chimney, see it? That chimney asks, Do you know what gives life its meaning, what it is that can never be taken from you?
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