Have Compassion: Events Affect The Faithful & The Heathens

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them.’ (Ecclesiastes 9:2); ‘<Jesus said,> (43) “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ (44) But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, (45) that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”’ (Matthew 5:43-45)

Back in the day, in the early 1990’s, I traveled across the oceans for months on end for work. I flew into California two-to-three times a year, usually San Francisco but occasionally Los Angeles as a stopover for a day before jetting over to Japan or Hong Kong (when it was still a British colony). I liked San Francisco in terms of its geography and architecture, and the climate was constantly cool to chilly, but never freezing. Los Angeles was not as appealing as it was crowded, but I usually stayed in Santa Monica on the coast which was beautiful in its oceanfront scenery (and the climate was a bit more comfortable).

Both places were vibrant and full of energy, though for me while it was fun to visit them for a day and see the sites, I never wanted to live out there. The people never seemed friendly and some were rather passively hostile. After I quit traveling abroad across the Pacific, I did return to the San Francisco area in the mid-1990s for a three-week technical training course, in Milpitas (just south of San Francisco and east of San Jose), and then twice in the 2000’s for week-long conferences, along with one week in San Diego.

These later ventures saw a change for the worse, unfortunately. San Francisco started to be overrun with homelessness and the start of the lawlessness that seems to now be rampant when I last visited twenty years ago. The people were more hostile than before, not violent (at least not to me), but more rude and crude in their demeanor and remarks. It made a picturesque city undesirable and ugly, and I have not wanted to go back since. The stories of the filth in the streets (literally and figuratively) and the rampant crime along with the open displays of ‘woke’ culture makes it very unappealing to return there. and I likely won’t.

All that said, I still pray for those in California who are dealing with the current political and cultural climate, those shop owners who must deal with the threat of shoplifters and vagrants chasing away customers in front of their stores. With the fires raging in Los Angeles, including the areas just north of Santa Barbara, I pray for those who have lost their homes and those still threatened to lose theirs by the flames.

Though we here on the East Coast may see the West Coast as ‘godless’, there are also Christians, full of Faith, who live there as well. Several notable ‘TV’ pastors broadcast their services from their home churches in California. Many Californians attend these churches and many others that are not as well-known. The crime and the flames, though, don’t discriminate. Both the heathen and the Faithful have been affected equally by these issues.

There are those who state the fires, in particular, are from God laying down a punishment for those who relish LA’s heathenistic lifestyle, who mock and deny Him. But would God not protect the homes of His Faithful? Why do the homes of Faithful burn down along side those of the heathen?

Solomon, who God made (at least at one point in Solomon’s life) the wisest man ever, understood in Ecclesiastes 9:2 the same events can happen to both those who are Faithful and those who are not.  Jesus, as part of the Sermon on the Mount, stated the same thing to emphasize the need to pray for both those who are Christians and support Christianity and those who are not Christians and seek to destroy the worship of Christ – the same events (the sun rising = good things occurring; the rain falling = bad things befalling) happen to both the Christian and the non-believer. 

All of us humans are the same in the aspect of we are born, we sin, we can get injured or suffer illnesses, and eventually we experience death (both from those around us and personally).  Christians can strike it rich or total our cars, as can the non-believers.  Life’s events are no respecter of social status, wealth, belief, or other benchmarks we humans use to ‘scale’ others or ourselves.  Cancer, heart attacks, and strokes can injure and kill the most Faithful or the worst offenders, and on the opposite side of the coin a long, healthy life can equally occur. 

There are some afflictions that are placed upon people by God, but it is not always to punish as it is to teach and show others proper Faith.  Job, in Job 1:21, was one of the most Faithful of God’s people in antiquity, when everything was taken away for him that was of value (except for his wife).  His children, his home, his livestock, his health – everything.  Yet Job proclaimed, ‘I came into this world with nothing, and I will leave it with nothing; God gave me everything I had, thus He can take it all back – all while I’m alive!  To God be the Glory!’ 

The blind man, from birth with no sight, was alleged to be the punishment assigned to his parents for some undisclosed sin, in John 9:1-12.  Jesus Himself corrected this wrong way of thinking, declaring it was not for the sins of the parents or of the man himself (punishment for a sin he was yet to commit after his birth?), but it was so Jesus to use this man to show the Power of Christ by giving him sight (and to demonstrate obedience to Christ, as the man had to follow the order to go wash in the Pool of Siloam).  So not all suffering is from punishment but comes from obedience in following the Lord.

Even for Jesus, for Him to fulfill His destiny as the Son of God and to be our Lord and Savior, He also had to suffer the indignation of a show trial, betrayal, denial, rejection, physical torture, embarrassment, and public execution.  We cannot expect God to give us ‘unicorns and rainbows’ as He did not provide that even for His Son.  Pray for those who are suffering, from the floods and the storms, from the fires and the loss of possessions, from the takeover of a false religion and doctrine; and pray that the Lord has spared us from these calamities, and pray that when it is our turn that we remain steadfast in our Faith to our Lord and Savior over all things!