The Fireproof Box After the Wildfire

When the 2018 Camp Fire swept through Paradise, California, Dave and Kathy Locatelli lost everything. Their home of twenty-three years was reduced to a concrete slab and ash. Photo albums, furniture, the kitchen table where their kids had done homework for two decades — all gone in an afternoon.

But when Dave returned to sift through the wreckage, he found their small fireproof safe sitting in the rubble, blackened but intact. Inside, completely untouched: their birth certificates, the deed to a plot of family land, and a handwritten letter from Kathy's late mother. The fire had consumed everything around it, yet what was locked inside that box survived without so much as a singed edge.

Peter writes to scattered, suffering Christians and tells them something audacious: you have an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. It is kept in heaven for you. The world around them was burning — persecution, displacement, loss. Yet Peter doesn't minimize their pain. He says their trials are refining their faith the way fire refines gold, burning away impurities until only what is genuine remains.

The Locatellis rebuilt. But they will tell you that what mattered most was never the house. It was what the fire could not touch.

That is what the Almighty offers every believer: a living hope, shielded by His power, kept beyond the reach of any flame this world can produce. And the faith being forged in you right now? Peter says it is worth more than gold.