It’s part of being human, or Christian, at least American. When our neighbor has a fire we run to help.

Fires happen all the time. Sometimes there are smoke and flames. Heart attacks and sickness, death, storms, job loss, wayward kids (or spouses), marital pain, financial reversal; those are just some of the fires happening in the lives of people around us.

We had two fires in our company this week. The first was a formal-eviction-set-your-stuff-out-on-the-curb-while-the-sheriff-stands-by kind of fire where a lady refused to pay her rent and refused to move out. Glyn, who runs our property management division, told me of how he called Phil and Justin from our construction team, and they brought some of their subcontractors (who didn’t get paid to come do this), and then Goeff and Elijah from our office stepped in, and Joe, and Mark from the field, and in less than 30 minutes they had an entire house totally emptied out and set on the street corner. 30 minutes! Our guys ran toward the fire, not away from it.

The second fire came when our #1 key, professional, credentialed, outside team member  (and a person for whom we’d had the utmost and deepest respect  and who we trusted so much that we’d given him control of our bank accounts) quit via email at 3:30 p.m. on April 15 and left us with no tax returns, about $200,000 of written checks unfunded, a payroll check and distribution checks missing, but kept our files, computer, coupon books, etc. How internal people from our team and external people rushed to the fire was inspiring. Jane Knudson—whom I’ve never met but who operates www.CFOJANE.com from her DesMoines base where she does work for a friend of mine—immediately contacted us, said she’d already talked with her partner’s husband (a tax attorney) who’d said he could help us file extensions that afternoon, and said “Keep me posted. We’re here for you.” And………I’ve never met her before. THAT’S RUNNING TO THE FIRE!

We didn’t need Jane’s help at that moment, the internal team already had the fire under control. But it gave great confidence to know there was someone we could call if we needed to.

That’s the best of our American / human / Christian / whatever-it-is tradition: the way we help each other during crisis. When two of the guys in our small group were threatened with losing their jobs in the recent Sisters of Mercy / St. John’s layoff, other people in the group had already talked about what we would do to spring into action to help them. That’s running to the fire!

Many years ago, as a pastor with great responsibility, I fell into a pit of great emotional / personal trouble. The majority of the leaders in my church and virtually every pastor I knew looked the other way. But there was one guy, Pastor Gary Denbow of Christian Chapel in Columbia, Missouri who reached out to me. Gary is now the president of Central Bible College here in Springfield, Missouri. I’ve always remembered his doing that and greatly appreciated him for it. He ran toward the fire.

Fires happen. If you haven’t had one yet, you will. It’s just a matter of time.

The question for all of us to consider is: are you the kind of person who runs to the fire?

I want to be. I’m grateful to be surrounded by people who are.