While I worked 500 miles away from my family, I got word that my dad's office and my aunt and uncle were evacuated because the Waldo Canyon fire burned closer and closer. Eager for up-to-the-minute news on the fire and more detail than my family gave in text messages, I scanned tweets and refreshed the newspaper's website like an insomniac on caffeine, listening to scanner traffic of firefighters setting up command centers and relaying information as each home caught fire.
Tweet after tweet with the hashtag #waldocanyonfire scrolled down my screen. Hundreds more poured out every minute. Tweets ranged from helpful: the sheriff and mayor used Twitter to ask people to stay off cell phones to keep lines free for emergencies; to overly dramatic: "watching the city burn from my porch </3"; to outright misleading, information which spread through the Twittersphere when retweeted by others. A wave of tweets promoted almost certainly photoshopped photos of the inferno. Because there was no gatekeeper, information (and misinformation) could spread quickly.
Constant updates intensified my feeling of impending doom as homes and a cherished landmark burnt to the ground. It was tempting to feel as if God had deserted or forgotten Colorado Springs (though as some facetiously pointed out, it's difficult to claim God was casting judgment on the town that houses Focus on the Family, Compassion International, Summit Ministries, the Navigators, and countless other ministries).
After scrolling through every new tweet for a solid hour, it was clear that few contained helpful new information. Many were retweets of other helpful tweets, cluttering my feed with the same details. A myriad of other tweets implored celebrities to repost a tweet and "spread the word" that Colorado Springs was in danger from the fire.
Some Twitter chatter was helpful, but the medium also gave a voice to the same rubbernecking voyeurs who were clogging traffic up and down the highway in Colorado Springs that night. And sure, virtual rubbernecking is a lot less physically dangerous and distracting than physically blocking traffic to take a photo. I found a sort of mindless catharsis in retweeting fire photos and other information, but how helpful is it, really?
After about 200 dramatic tweets from various people "watching their city burn," I wondered if there wasn't a more helpful outlet for personal grief and shock than letting the world know about it. Wildfire Tees quickly launched a website selling a half-dozen new t-shirt designs to raise money for Care and Share, the Colorado Red Cross, and other fire relief funds. They found something to do to help while their city burned.
Not everyone is a graphic design artist or entrepreneurial enough to create a fundraiser in under 12 hours. The local Red Cross shelters were probably not looking for an overflow of untrained civilians eager to put their hands to work. But I wonder how many people who tweeted to Perez Hilton, Oprah, and other celebrities or announced that they were "watching their city burn" thought to open a new browser window and donate $10 to the local Red Cross? I didn't. Sharing information or even empathy through an abstract social medium is just not the same as lending an actual helping hand—physical or virtual. When it's so easy to let the entire world know your every thought these days, it's easy to forget that sometimes the most practical, helpful work can (and should) be done in secret (Matt. 6:2-4).
When I went to bed that night, I didn't know how much of the town would have burned when I looked at the morning news. It certainly felt as if God had turned his hand against my hometown. It seemed as though we could honestly say with Jeremiah, "My strength has perished, and so has my hope from the Lord" (Lam. 3:18).
And yet, the sun rose Wednesday morning to show the city still standing, and the ashes cleared—a little. Thirty-two thousand people had evacuated their homes, but when the city released the count, fewer than 350 homes were gone. To some families, of course, those losses mean the world, and the two deaths reported so far from the Colorado Springs wreckage are tragic. But the toll could have been much worse. And as more than 1,500 firefighters continue to bring the fire under submission and Colorado Springs faces the task of returning to normalcy, the prophet Jeremiah's example again comes to mind.
It's perfectly normal to grieve and mourn, and even rail against God. Jeremiah does so for much of the book of Lamentations. But then, right in the middle of the book, sandwiched between tales of woe and tribulation and feelings that God must have deserted us, comes a reminder. It's the reminder that, even in the middle of terror, and even when it seems God himself would be held responsible for that terror, we can trust his goodness: "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."
