Every time we travel to the San Francisco area to visit our son and his family, I wonder if I’ll be there when California breaks off and falls into the ocean.
When I was a kid, someone told me that California will inevitably one day slide into the sea when “the big one”—the mother of all earthquakes—hits. I don’t remember who said it, but it obviously stuck like Velcro to some impressionable wall in my mind.
That’s why I’m a bit nervous about my son, his wife and their two kids living a stone’s throw from the San Andreas Fault.
My neurosis was recently ramped up a notch when I learned that California sits on the “Ring of Fire.” I thought “Ring of Fire” was just an old Johnny Cash song, but no, it’s actually a circle of earthquake-prone and volcano-rich areas on the Pacific Rim.
It includes big cities like Santiago, Chile; Tokyo, Japan; and yes, San Francisco.
The “Ring of Fire” has been in the news fairly often this past year because of earthquakes in Los Angeles, Mexico, Chile, Japan, and other Pacific rim areas. And to quote that old sage, the goldfish in “The Cat in the Hat”: “I do not like it, not one little bit.”
I can’t stand thinking about Lucy and Levi, my California grandcuties, napping on the “Ring of Fire,” for Pete’s sake!!
Okay … I think it might be time for me to take a deep cleansing breath. Typing this out loud makes me realize that worrying about “the big one” is a little crazy.
Actually, many of my worries seem nuts when I drag them into the light. But, try as I might, it’s hard to keep my mind from sometimes scrolling down through all the “what ifs,” even though I know that worrying can’t prepare me for or prevent anything.
In fact, fear and worry only rob me of whatever joy and peace I could be enjoying in the here and now.
And most of my “what ifs” never even happen.
My son hasn’t experienced one single tremor out there on the “Ring of Fire” … while I thought a plane was crashing into our house when we had an earthquake here in South Carolina a few months ago.
Sometimes the places we think are the safest turn out to be the most dangerous, and vice versa. There’s really no figuring it out.
It reminds me of an incident, recorded in Luke 4, when Jesus went back to Nazareth, his hometown. He was in the synagogue with folks He’d grown up with—a safe place, right?
Not exactly. Those old “friends” and neighbors got so mad at Jesus they marched Him to the edge of town, intending to throw Him off a cliff. But they didn’t, or couldn’t, and the Bible doesn’t explain why. It simply says Jesus passed through the angry mob and went on His way.
I love that. I love the confidence Jesus possessed and surely exuded as He parted that angry, murderous sea and walked right through. How’d He do that?
I’m not sure, but what I do know is that Jesus fully entrusted Himself to His Father, so He didn’t worry.
I can live that way, too.
Everyplace in this world is on the “Ring of Fire” when it comes to the potential for life-shaking difficulties and pain. I don’t know when things might erupt or even break apart.
But it’s possible to trust the perfect heart and will of God, as Jesus did, and I need to choose to do that.
The supernatural peace of God will come when I can honestly say to Him, “I have trusted in Your lovingkindess” (Psalm 13:5), and “Thy will be done” (Matthew 6:10).