Things That Remain

“Heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear”

Luke 21:33


In California and much of the western United States we find ourselves in the middle of the fire season. Homes that are at risk do the best they can to create a barrier to protect their worldly possessions from the combustion-able environment that surrounds them. The Lord gave me a great visual reminder yesterday to remind me to keep the main thing the main thing.

I remember a fire that took place in the the small town in Northern California called Paradise. Maybe the town got the name from its earliest settlers who felt that this area was like heaven on earth. Sadly, the fire proved otherwise as everything was destroyed by a raging Camp Fire in 2018. If you saw the pictures you could see the devastation. Nothing was left standing except for one thing. In every picture the homes were reduced to rubble but the chimney was still intact.

There is a powerful visual we can take away from a fire like this, a sobering reminder to be mindful of what we invest our lives in. As the camera paned the scene of the ruins you could see chimneys of all shapes and sizes were still standing. The obvious conclusion to me is the things made by man are all going to burn whereas the things made by God are still standing, even after a raging fire. All the rocks stacked up might have been blackened by the fire but they remained firmly in place.

The Bible exhorts us to build our lives on the Word of God knowing that in this life we all will face many storms of varying degrees but that we can be confident when the dust settles and the winds cease and the rain subsides we will still be standing because Jesus Christ is our Rock!

“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.”

Matthew 7:24-25


I LOVE YOU!