It's not just stuff

Watching people desperately searching through the rubble that was their home, seeing people carrying what few meager possessions they have left through the muck and the heat for hours or days, witnessing the blank and hopeless expressions on their faces, watching as they cling to family members they possibly had not ever really hugged like they meant it... to say that all of this is heartbreaking feels like such an inadequate description of what is going on.

Though it is small in comparison, I can somewhat relate to how these people feel. When I was eleven we lost our house and everything in it to a fire. It was there that morning and gone that afternoon. Just like that. Unlike these people in New Orleans and surrounding areas, we had a place to go. We were given food and clothing almost immediately. We had insurance money that helped us to rebuild, not our home, but our lives. And even with the many blessing we received, we were devastated.

We went back to the house several times to try and salvage something, anything, that would have reminded us of what our lives were before the fire. I went in to what was my room searching through tears for something to remind me that my previous life was not all just a dream. I was so excited when I found that one of my Cabbage Patch Kids had survived the fire. The reason it was not destroyed is because it was not one of my favorites and it had been shoved under my desk and had the junk of a pre-adolescent's bedroom piled on top of it. That doll, that I gave little thought to before the fire, instantly became my prized posession. I still have it. I hope I will always have it.

So much of our identity is wrapped up in our stuff. And you may think that this is not true for you, but just imagine if everything that is familiar to you was taken away. Your favorite pair of worn in jeans, favorite pillow that smells of your shampoo, sports trophies that you earned though blood and sweat, childhood pictures. Truly irreplaceable things that seem to make you who you are.

As Christians we should know, atleast on some level, that who we are does not, or should not atleast, revolve around the things that we have. And we can find comfort in situations like this because we believe that our worth is found in God. But many of these people do not have that assurance.

In their eyes, they have not only lost their stuff, but they are flat out lost without their stuff. They will forget minute by minute who they used to be because they no longer have the things that made them who they were. We must pray for many things for these people. We must pray for safety and basic necessities of life, but above all, we must pray that they will find refuge in God. That they will not forever be a shell of who they were because of the possessions they have lost. We must pray that they will call on the name of Jesus and find that he is better than anything that can be purchased.

We need to hold loosely to what we have. Any one of us could be in similar situations to these people in New Orleans. We are not above it. We are not beyond it. The only thing that remains constant is God. He is not absent in all of this. The statement "He is our Rock" takes on new meaning in light of this tragedy.