Soul-seeking prompted by the fearsome Southern California firestorms will be on display this weekend at mosques, synagogues and churches. The faithful will turn to God for solace and divine intervention and to their clerics for answers to troubling questions like "Where was God when our homes burned?"
Muslims throughout Southern California began the weekend services Friday reciting a special Islamic prayer by the Prophet Muhammad to bring rain, hoping it will extinguish those wildfires still burning.
"The firefighters need some help from nature and maybe from God," said Abdullahi Diriye, a 39-year-old from Somalia who recited the prayer with more than 2,000 others at the Islamic Center of Orange County in Garden Grove.
Jewish congregants in Santa Clarita will say prayers of thanksgiving on the Sabbath today for deliverance from the towering blaze that roared through the hills but stopped just short of their homes.
"My congregants had firetrucks parked in their cul-de-sacs [in Stevenson Ranch], foaming down their houses," said Rabbi Steve Conn of Congregation Beth Shalom. "When the fire retreated, we all had an experience of thanksgiving. There's tremendous gratitude for the firefighters who protected us."
The pastor of a Baptist church at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains will give a sermon Sunday on why prayer is a more productive endeavor than worry, a bold message to a congregation that has at least 16 families who have lost homes to fire.
"Sunday morning we're going to deal with worry and why it won't solve our problems," said Rob Zinn, the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Highland. He plans to counsel that serenity, especially in difficult times, comes only through prayer.
The overwhelming size of fires can bring people quickly to their knees.
"Everyone in times of disaster realizes they have to rely on God to give them hope and faith in the midst of a world they have limited control over," said Pastor Andy Taylor of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in San Diego, where three congregants lost their homes.
At the Highland church, a family of six who took refuge in the church last Saturday night became Christians at a Sunday service the next day, Zinn said.
The most difficult task for religious leaders whose flocks live in the fire zone is to explain why God let one congregant's house burn while others were saved.
