The roof that fell in at Limoges

One · What happened

The march, and the fire in Limoges

The AP reported that demonstrations ran through cities across France on Saturday 17 October against rising living costs and the condition of the schools. Student unions had started the movement over underfunding and teacher shortages, according to Al Jazeera. The authorities counted about 550,000 marchers, the organizers 800,000. By evening, masked groups had set fires and attacked public buildings in several cities, city halls among them. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said hundreds of businesses were looted in Paris and three other cities.

In Limoges, the AP reported, flames engulfed the nineteenth-century city hall, and its roof collapsed. The prefect, Maurice Barate, told the French news channel LCI that the fire was set deliberately. He said it had nearly destroyed the building. By Sunday morning in Paris, cobblestones lay dislodged and storefronts shattered around the Place de la République. The base of the Marianne statue there had been partly taken apart. Looting and damage were also reported in other tourist and shopping areas of the city, the AP said.

The AP’s count of arrests across the country stood at 1,800 at the least. Of those, 855 were in the Paris region, and Paris prosecutors said 557 of them were held in custody. Nuñez said more than 500 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters were injured. One person died of a heart attack in Paris, according to police there, who gave no further details. Al Jazeera, citing the Interior Ministry, reported higher totals, nearly 2,400 arrests on Saturday and about 1,000 officers hurt. Counts like these get revised for days, and none of them is final.

“Anger and shame” were the words Al Jazeera quoted President Emmanuel Macron using in his address to the nation on Sunday. He said looters would “pay for their crimes” and drew a line between protesters with “legitimate demands” and those who “destroyed, smashed, and looted.” He announced a crisis unit to give urgent aid to people in difficulty. He did not announce a curfew or a state of emergency. Nuñez wrote on X that the right to protest is a fundamental right and that violence is no part of it, the AP reported. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a presidential candidate on the left, said the government was solely responsible for the destruction. Marine Le Pen, on the far right, wrote that rioters had spoiled the day. Both spoke ahead of next spring’s presidential election. Who is to blame for the fire is for French voters and French courts to settle, and a reader in another country has no vote in either.

Two · What it is doing

What the footage does to the man watching

“Didn’t think it would escalate like this,” Margaux Eude, 26, told the AP, as a supporter of the movement. Jean Foissy, 74, wanted to join the march and found “a wall of riot police and fires everywhere,” and went home. Both of them were on the ground that Saturday and saw it for themselves. A reader watching from another country has no street to walk home through, and the first thing he feels is often a verdict.

“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the LORD see it and be displeased” (Proverbs 24:17–18). Solomon left no exception for the enemy who has earned it. One reader watches the Limoges roof go down and feels the warm satisfaction of a man proved right about the government. Another watches the arrests and enjoys the ruin of a crowd he never liked, with a sentence ready for anybody who asks.

A third reader knows the grocery receipt behind the march. He has kept his own bills in a kitchen drawer for a year and has been angry about them for most of it. The footage hands that anger an audience. The longer he watches, the more of the fire he starts to forgive. James wrote to scattered believers, “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:19–20).

A fourth reader hears the clip as a forecast, with the midterms on 3 November. He plays Limoges forward onto his own street. By the fourth viewing the dread has grown, with nothing in the kitchen for it to push against. Nobody on the screen is in his house, and the fear has come in anyway.

Three · Where the ground is

The Galileans and the tower

Some people present at that very time told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices (Luke 13:1). Jesus answered the question behind the report, whether those men had earned it. “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2–3). He added the eighteen crushed when the tower in Siloam fell on them, a case with no Pilate anywhere in it. The answer was the same. Anybody who has told himself that France had it coming, or that the rioters did, has just heard Jesus answer him.

The man who walked out of the prison

Luke wrote that Pilate “released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but Jesus he delivered over to their will” (Luke 23:25). He was Barabbas, the man the crowd in Jerusalem had asked for by name. He had been jailed for an uprising and a killing, and he walked out of the prison that day while Jesus was handed over to the soldiers. Paul told the Romans whom the death of Jesus was for. He wrote that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

The anger with a receipt in its hand

A pastor who knows the household can go over the receipt with the man. Scripture has plenty on carrying the anger such a receipt raises, and it has nothing that calls the receipt a lie. Solomon wrote, “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly” (Proverbs 14:29). The Jerusalem believers gave “to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:45). Scripture offers no reason for the fire in Limoges, and a reader should be slow to supply one. Christ rules over France and over the midterms. The dread of both goes to Him in prayer, with the congregation beside the reader.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Five jobs fit into the fifteen days before 3 November. Each takes a phone and a grocery bag at most.

1. 01

   Call the relative you are bracing for.

   Pick the one person at your table whose vote makes your jaw tighten. Call him this week about his job or his knee. Then settle with him, before you gather after the vote, that the election stays off the table for the whole meal. Proverbs 17:14 says, “The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out.”

2. 02

   Write a note to believers in France.

   Ask your pastor which missionary family or sister church your congregation supports in France, and send them a handwritten note saying your church prayed for their city on Sunday. If you have no tie there, he can find one through a mission agency he trusts. Romans 12:15 says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

3. 03

   Read the Barabbas verses at supper.

   Open Luke 23:13–25 with whoever eats at your table tonight and take turns reading it through. Ask each person which man in the story he would have been, starting with the youngest, before you read verse 25 again. Barabbas goes free there, and a child will notice it first.

4. 04

   Buy a week of groceries for a household you know.

   Ask the deacon or the pastor who handles your church’s benevolence which family has a bill that has outrun the pay. Fill a cart with a week of food and leave it with him or at their door. Leave no note about the economy or the vote. John in the wilderness told the crowds, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise” (Luke 3:11).

5. 05

   Walk the block with Psalm 37 and no phone.

   Close the app tonight before the clip plays a fourth time. Leave the phone on the counter and walk for fifteen minutes with Psalm 37:8 on a card in your pocket. The card reads, “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.” Bring the card home with you and stick it to the refrigerator, where the whole house will see it.