It has been a difficult week for many of our friends across the Cowboy State. As of Friday afternoon, five separate fires had consumed nearly half-a million acres of forage, livestock, and wildlife along with a century and a half of human land improvements.
As fellow Wyomingites survey the damage and work to survive the fast-approaching winter, shrill discourse and political posturing are embarrassingly out of place. Soot-blackened fire-fighters and bone-tired cowboys have neither the time nor the energy to speculate on future elections while they fight to save livestock and feed their families in a world on fire.
Natural realities have a way of bringing us down to earth—and back to the things that matter most.
Fred Rogers, beloved to millions of children and adults, once said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” His words came to my mind this week.
I saw ordinary people from across the Cowboy State drop whatever they were doing and go to lend a hand. Not knowing how they could help, they went anyway. Aware that their unorganized presence could do more harm than good, they readily submitted themselves to others who could turn their hands into blessings.
Strangers helping strangers with gifts of money, food, transportation, fuel, and the use of heavy equipment require communication and humility above all. These three elements—generosity, humility, and communication—emerged out of the smoke and confusion to beat back the hellish fires.
As I watched these events unfold, human political realities came into clearer focus.
First, it may seem weird to say, but it has to be said nonetheless: Only human beings worked to stop the destruction. Livestock fled. Wildlife fled. Fish remained blissfully unaware as their ecosystem was blackened. But human beings fought back. It was a live-fire exercise of Genesis 1:26, “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Every attempt at preserving nature that does not recognize that humans—and humans alone—fight to preserve nature is doomed to fail. “The Rights of Nature” resolution, recently passed by the Jackson City Council, is not only nonsensical; it is also destructive of the very nature that it purports to protect.
Second, even the most herculean human efforts are pointless and ineffective as long as they remain isolated and alone. Picture a thousand firefighters randomly scattered in the flames and you can imagine the pointless loss of life on a grand scale.
But with communication and coordination, those thousand people become a million strong. It is not good for man to be alone. Therefore, ”God settles the solitary in a home (Psalm 68:6). We were created to live together and to work together for the common good.
Third, communication and coordination require willing obedience. Good hearts submit for the sake of their neighbors. This willing submission to save the world is most clearly seen in Jesus, who, “. . . being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:9).
But while good-hearted people willingly submit to authority, they will brook no nonsense. A spontaneous government arose across county and state lines because people had an urgent task to accomplish. Should anyone attempt to hijack its power for personal gain, he or she would find that it dissolves as quickly as it arose.
Corruption and sin are never far away. Nothing that I described above was as pure as presented. Plenty of squabbles, power grabs, and grumbling happen behind the scenes. But God intervened just enough to keep them on task. And God intervened also by means of weather and a million other unseen miracles.
That’s why we pray. The powers unleashed by a lightning bolt are no match for the strongest man or the strongest government. But God is never absent from our world. Because of Him the fires are burning out. And soon He will blanket the area in snow to renew the land in the spring.
And His gracious providence will not end there. His gracious hand will feed anxious ranchers and hungry wildlife. “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26).
The same will prove true in every peril—both national and natural. Do what is given into your hand to do. But pray because the outcome belongs to God.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com.
