by Pastor John Kim

It was four years ago almost to the week that we faced the fires that hit San Diego pretty hard. I remember driving through the 15 freeway heading south to the church office (off of Convoy at the time) on my way to teach a baptism class when I drove right through a firewall, which had to be one of the more scary moments of my life as everything turned pitch black and the heat was pretty intense. After what seemed like forever, I saw daylight and drove through and it was an eerie feeling. We had to move our church service that day to someone’s home and looking off into the distance, it was pretty strange to think that fires could do so much to change the course of how we look at life.

This morning I was awakened to find that we had to evacuate our home and after packing some things, we moved over to Scripps Ranch, only to find that we had to evacuate from there as well. Moving to the coast in La Jolla, the day has been pretty much filled with trying to coordinate the church members in finding homes for all the people who have had to evacuate.

Though it is pretty hectic considering all that is going on, I can’t help but thank God for His grace and goodness in how the church family is responding with every effort being made to help provide shelter and care for one another. It really is great, even those who are new to the church are jumping in and offering their homes.

Dropping by the church, I couldn’t help but look at all my books and realize that they would go up pretty fast in a fire. I took a few to prepare for the next coming weeks so that I would at least have a few resources but it was a bit sad looking at everything, realizing that a lifetime of collecting books could go away in a moment. But having studied Ecclesiastes these past few months, it has been sobering to understand that everything in this life is really passing in nature and without God, there would be no point to it. A life filled with plenty would be an empty life without God but a life filled with God though with little would make me a pretty rich man. These are thoughts that are not so easy to consider when one realizes that there is a very good chance you could lose your home and all your possessions, but when you realize that you’re going to leave it all behind one day anyway, it doesn’t seem so important after all.

What is all the more important is seeing that the love of God moves us to care for one another in time of need and I really am so thankful to have a church family that will stand in the line of fire (literally) and apply the kind of family love that we have talked about in Romans 12:10 and has been generous and hospitable and considerate in considering the needs of others.

Who knows what the next few days will bring but one thing for sure, I know that they will bring the grace of God through the love and care of our church family.