A Walk through West

Last week I got to see firsthand the damage done to the town of West, Texas by a massive explosion at the local fertilizer plant.  I was immediately struck by how tightly compacted the small town of West is and I was also struck by how far reaching the destruction was in that small of a place. 

Some homes and buildings were blown apart and burned.  Some homes, and particularly the local nursing home, looked as though a massive force had just pushed violently against the structures causing walls and roofs to buckle.  Scattered throughout other parts of the town were homes and buildings with a single hole in the wall or roof patched up with plywood or a tarp.  It also hit me that the deaths of 15 people in a town this size meant that almost every family was touched in some way.  That unseen pain in the loss of life is undoubtedly greater and deeper than any of the visual damage.

This week as I thought about what I had seen in West and what I had read in the book of Romans, some things came together.  The power of sin to wreck lives so destructively is clear in both West, Texas and the letter to the Romans.  Someone who was trying to make a living, made some bad choices about how powerful products were handled.  A fire sparked a devastating blow that buckled the lives of many.  Sin destroys our lives the same way.  It starts as small mistakes that we make in the course of everyday life. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" Romans 3:23.

Those mistakes may seem harmless for a long time, even years.  Then one day, those mistakes prove to be incredibly costly to us and to those around us.  People who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time are hurt and wounded and death comes.  Death is always the unavoidable consequence of sin, "For the wages of sin is death..." Romans 6:23.

But I also saw firsthand how everywhere in that little town where destruction was present, there were also signs of redemption.  Texas Baptist Men volunteers were clearing the rubble and setting up to start the task of rebuilding.  Volunteers were sacrificing their time to clean up destruction that they had no part in, but they were choosing to have a part in the redemption and the rebuilding.  "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 5:20b-21.

So many were hurt by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.  I was blessed to be there at the time I was, to see the right thing happening in God's time.  Though the work of sin is always to bring death, the work of God is always to bring life - eternal life.  Let's take a walk through that this Sunday.

For the journey...

Tim