This week, as I write, people in the town of Jasper were allowed to “come home” and assess damages. They had a one-hour time frame to be there as the fire still raged some distance away.
Imagine coming back to your town to see your lot empty. No house where it once stood, shiny and clean, but now a grey dusty patch over perhaps a cement foundation. Bare earth where grass once grew. Everything gone! And if you drove as far as the park, the road into it was a charred mess of black sticks, all that’s left of a once beautiful forest.
I watched the online video. Section after section of homes burned to the ground. Some homes and businesses sustained less damage, but the town was rather empty, aside from RCMP and a small contingent of staff.
Interviews with people who’d lived there, or had planned to, showed a mix of people who wanted to come back and start over. Others planned to move somewhere else. One of those people interviewed was a leader in the town, a daughter of a retired writer I know.
Wendy had just started a new job there and her mom wondered how often that kind of job comes around. In our messenger conversation, I said I was glad they got out safely. But what about work? One needs a job in order to live. I promised I would pray for her daughter and family.
My own resources may be limited to a small donation at times like this, but God is bigger. Not diminishing the need for many of these families, I pray that they will get the help they need to get back on their feet and be able to earn a living again. I pray when Wendy and that community come to mind. It certainly isn’t hard, since they are in the news as much as the war in the middle east.
What can we do? Pray! Sometimes it’s all we can do, and let the people know we are praying for them.
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