When I first walked the Camino in Spain in 2003, the economy there was very strong. A lot of people there were building new houses or buying a second or a third house as an investment, assured that the price of the house was going to rise. They thought it was a sure thing, that they were building their lives upon a solid rock. Well, we know what happened next. The housing market and the stock market collapsed in the US and throughout the world. Things were bad in the US, but even worse elsewhere. Countries like Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Portugal, and Greece had economic tragedies unlike anything seen like the Great Depression. When I walked the Camino in 2012, and again in 2015, 2016, and 2017, I walked through a very strange town that had hundreds of houses and town houses and a large golf course, but almost all of those units had been abandoned and had not been finished, and of those that had been completed, most were unoccupied and unsold. During the housing boom in Spain, all of these house seemed like the best investment possible, but now it certainly did not seem like a good idea at all.
Are our lives built on a strong faith? What is exposed in our hearts when we suffer a trial or a storm in our lives? Sometimes those times of challenge and suffering can bring us closer to Christ. Sometimes our lives can fall apart and our faith can collapse. We may see a need for security or protection, but do we turn to God in those times, or do we go to other things? Is our house built on solid rock or does it collapse when the going gets tough.
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