A member of my family suggested to me that the firestorm in Los Angeles  was God's punishment for the "young people" living there. I'm not sure whom he exactly meant, But I reminded him that some evangelicals also said that years ago about the New Orleans Katrina disaster. It is so each to blame God for bad things. Did the Christians blame Nero when Rome burned? Throughout history, Christians have used God's vengeance as an excuse for bad things happening.

It is okay to obliterate Gaza and it's people because of what was done to God's chosen people. Early in the conflict, a hard-liner in the Israeli cabinet advocated dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza. There is great hated and it is on both sides. Do we blame God for the carnage? Do we blame Allah? Or do we blame Man's sinful nature? 

In the Old Testament book of Job, God allowed Satan to torment Job, kill his family, devastate his farm, until he had nothing. Job's wife said, "curse God and die." But Job rightly said, "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." That is an affirmation we should say whenever we wake to to a new day God has given us. Blessed by the name of the Lord!

In 1943 my mother and grandmother emerged from a bunker in Hamburg to see their neighborhood in flames. The bombing of Hamburg gave birth to the term, "firestorm." They rushed past their street and every house was burning. Everything they had was gone. All the new furniture that they had bought from extra savings, all her dolls save one were lost forever in the flames.

Los Angeles is only one recent example of horrific tragedy. The same rain that falls on the just fall on the unjust. God does not target neighborhoods. God is not sitting behind a computer board video game targeting areas of the world. That is not how God works. 

We are Americans and as long as we live we strive to do better and be better. We personally were immigrants who came to the New York area with just a suitcase. We were legal immigrants, having spent hours filling out forms and obtaining the necessary shots. It was up to my parents to excel. It was up to me to be a good son and do well in school. And I think I did.

If I lose my life work today, yes, I will cry but I will not blame God.

And we should not blame the Lord for the fires in California. Only ignorant people do that.