Trial by Fire

On July 15^th, 2026 a storm cluster delivered over 2,000 lightning strikes to Central Oregon, and coupled with high July temperatures and strong prevailing winds, the result was multiple fires in remote rural locations. Today, several days later, Central Oregon is on fire. The fires in Central Oregon have wreaked devastating havoc on our community, and I’ve given a bit of brain time in all of this to the consideration of vocation. On my way home a few evenings ago I observed a wildland firefighter pulled over at a wide spot on Hwy. 26, securing a load and prepping his fire rig for what was coming next. Yesterday I saw an incident command center going in east of town with tents set up in a dirt field. As of today, the fires have already made their way deep into the Maury mountains and are now making a run at Grizzly Mountain, McKay Saddle and the Ochoco range. My son-in-law, who works for the local Forest Service office, calls these incredibly damaging fires,”unprecedented.” I got word tonight that four known-to-me families are facing evacuation.

 

What do the Oregon fires have to do with vocation? Let me try to explain. Sometimes Christians think of vocation in bifurcated terms…the sacred and the secular. One is spiritual service and the other (much less significant) is ordinary service. The funny thing is that Bible never makes such distinctions. Well, maybe I should qualify that statement. One of the interesting thoughts that is introduced in the New Testament is this idea of the ‘priesthood of all believers’ (1 Peter 2:5,9). What this means is that all Christians share in access to God, and offer to God spiritual service…no matter what they do. For the Christian, work is worship, and there is no qualitative vocational difference between a pastor and a longshoreman or a homemaker. The Apostle Paul made a vocationally revolutionary statement when he wrote, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor. 10:31 ESV). Paul is telling the Corinthian Christians that their lives, from something as ordinary and mundane as eating and drinking, can participate in a God-exalting act. The inference is that God can be glorified in everything (including vocation!) in our everyday lives. During the time of the Protestant Reformation this put sparks to the dry tinder of an exclusive clergy and a seemingly insignificant laity. Check out what the Reformer and father of the English Bible, William Tyndale (1494-1536), said about vocation,

 

“There is no work better than another to please God: to pour water, to wash dishes, to be a shoe repairman, or an apostle, all is one; to wash dishes and to preach is all one.”

 

Author Derek Brown, commenting on Martin Luther’s view of vocation, had this to say,

 

“Luther refers to our vocations as ‘the masks of God.’ We encounter the baker who prepares and supplies our bread, but behind this baker is a gracious Creator faithfully providing for his creatures. Far from serving as a mere means to a more spiritual end, our work has an inherent dignity and value because it is God’s chosen means to provide for his creatures.”

 

So, what does this have to do with fires in Central Oregon? In my mind it has everything to do with them. In a very real sense, the firefighters in Central Oregon are doing absolutely critical work, and in their work, God is glorified. Some wildland firefighters may be conscious of the connection and others likely not so, but in their fulfilling of their vocational calling, good is being done and God is being glorified. Wiser theological heads call this ‘common grace’…something done for the mutual benefit of others.

 

In all of this; in the hard work of those fighting fires, good is being done and God is being glorified, and for this I am profoundly grateful. Thank you wildland firefighters, and airplane pilots, and helicopter pilots, and ground crew logistics experts, and water truck drivers, and all those serving on the front lines to keep the flames at bay. There are Central Oregon communities that are grateful for your vocational callings. Thank you for the risks you are taking, and thank you for what you’re doing. We see you glorifying God in an extraordinary way.