I read this by Rick Warren, author of the best-selling self-help book, The Purpose Driven Life. He has been actively assisting victims of the California wildfires during this past week and says this about his own family's wildfire experience in 2003 -
We could see the flames from our backyard. During that fire, our own family was told to evacuate. We were warned a couple of hours in advance, so we had a couple of hours to think about, "What will we take with us and what will we leave behind.?"
You know, we didn't even fill our car completely. We packed up pictures, and some papers, and our bibles, and some hard drives, but that was about it. We realized that most of it was very replaceable. It is just stuff, that in the bottom line The greatest things in life are not things..
When disasters come along, we realize that our value is not found in our valuables, and that our self-worth is not tied to our net worth. It is in times like these that we realize there's a whole lot more important in life than what’s material.. The spiritual and relational parts of life are far more important.
