Fire!!

In the week leading up to Christmas break, I like to take a day to do a devotional with my students where we sit down and make ornaments together as we discuss scriptures. This year only one class had time to do this particular activity, but it opened up some great questions and conversations with my youngest group of students. Our school has an approach to infusing the Bible into all subjects by filtering topics through the lens of CBRR (Created. Broken. Redeemed. Restored). God’s plan for humanity can be summed up with these four events: We were created in His image, broken by sin, redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and will be restored again one day in Heaven. The CliffsNotes version of all sixty-six books of divine scripture is condensed to this one four letter acronym, CBRR.

For our Christmas ornaments, we start with brand new crayons fresh out of the Crayola box. We discuss how God created us all perfectly and for a purpose. Students pick out a few different colors and then are instructed to break them and peel off the wrappers. We talk about Genesis 3 and how God’s will for human life was broken by sin. Once Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they found themselves naked and ashamed. We then put the broken crayon pieces into the glass ornaments and turn them over a lit candle. As the heat of the flame begins to melt the wax, the kids turn their ornaments (held with a clothespin) and let the colors blend together and coat the inside of the glass bulb. The broken crayons are redeemed for another purpose just as believers are redeemed through Christ. The final product is a shiny new ornament with broken crayons that have been restored into a new form representing the new bodies we will inhabit when we are one day reunited with Christ.The book of Revelation promises the joy of this reunion with the Lord where, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain…” Until then, we are living in a broken world where bad things happen to good people. On Sunday I listened to a sermon that touched on the fires raging through California and it got me reflecting on my own experience with a fire and all the ways God’s protection was over my girls and me during the ordeal.

Last summer while visiting the ranch a fire broke out in our house pasture about 20 feet from the garage. In the spirit of full disclosure, I did accidentally start the fire and the dry ground began to burn in a blink. When I discovered that our patio hose wouldn’t stretch far enough to the source, I knew I was in trouble. Living so far out from town, it never once crossed my mind to reach out to 911. I threw up a prayer and made calls to my father-in-law and neighboring ranchers, and by the grace of God, each one answered immediately in an area that rarely has cell service. In the meantime I had my young children filling up buckets of water by the house for me to haul over to fight the perimeter of the blaze, assuring them that we were safe. I had my youngest get my purse with my keys in it and put it in the car parked in the garage. I told them that if the fire turned toward the house, we would grab the dog, jump in and go. God kept the wind blowing away from us and toward the highway. In the flat landscape of New Mexico, smoke could be seen from miles away and pickups began flying up our driveway to what I’m sure looked like the Little Rascals fire brigade. Our neighboring ranchers, no strangers to fighting a pasture fire, jumped into action and after an eventful morning eventually got it put out before it reached any structures or livestock.

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

-1 Peter 1:6-7

One thing our pastor mentioned that I can attest to be true is that fire moves people. As a young widow, I have learned that when placed in threatening, fight or flight situations, I am a fighter. I don’t know if this response is how I’ve always been wired or something I’ve involuntarily had to develop being on my own. In many parts of the world, even today, widows aren’t even given the option to fight. Once their spouse dies, many widows are considered worthless, stripped of their rights and property, and unable to continue living with the same protections they had before. In India, the Hindu practice of Sati, burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, wasn’t even outlawed until 1987. Why would God allow people to suffer through such fires? The simple answer is that we live in a broken world.

One thing we can count on is that we will have trouble in this world (John 16:33). There will be times that our feet will be held to the fire, but if our foothold is in Christ, we will always come out on the other side ahead. Fire is a purifier. Scripture references the process of refining gold with fire as a way to skim off the imperfections and end up with something pure and much more valuable. The trials we go through can have the same effect on us if we keep our focus on the Lord. Different seasons will bring about different struggles for us and the ones we love. Whether it is an illness, divorce, loss of home and income, depression, or just plain feeling lost, etc… God is with you no matter what the trial. He sees and fully cares about every aspect of your life that original sin has caused to be less than perfect and will equip you to face every battle-big or small. Every fire you walk through is an opportunity to walk with God and draw closer to Him as you are strengthened and refined.

Love, Molly

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