Reflecting back on the fire that destroyed 500 homes and left ours standing has not been easy.  My mind wants to make some sense out of what happened…what happened to us and what happened to our friends and neighbors that are left with piles of ash.  But I have decided that trying to make sense out of it all, trying to discover the “whys,” is the wrong path to walk.  The path I am choosing to take focuses on a phrase, a word, and a prayer.

(The fire crossing the road behind us)

First the phrase…and it is not “the grace of God.”  I would have a hard time looking at a foundation full of ashes and saying, “Ah, the grace of God.”  It might be right, but oh so hard.  And so the phrase I have been focusing on is “the will of God.”  This helps me.  I do not need to understand the will of God.

And that brings me to the word that has been helping me, and that word is “mystery.”  The will of God is mysterious and there are many who experience mysteries of God’s will that are far more difficult and painful than a fire. I can live with the mysteries of God’s will because I know God.

And so the prayer.   Just because God’s will for our lives at times is deeply confusing and mysterious, and our hearts long for “whys” that we will never hear, it never diminishes God’s trustworthiness.  No matter how deep and painful the ways he might lead us, he can always be trusted.  And so my prayer is that God will use the twists and turns of his will to deepen my trust in him.

Tuesday June 11.  I get a reverse 911 call on my cell phone ordering us to evacuate our home immediately.   Rushing home by the back roads to avoid road blocks I can see the huge black plum of smoke and the orange glow of flames a couple of hundred feet high.  The wind was blowing 30 to 40 miles per hour pushing the fire right towards our house.  Being close to the point of the fires origin I knew I had just minutes to collect some valuables and flee.  Sue was driving home from Kansas.  I was on my own.

After taking less than ten minutes to toss photo albums, pictures, journals, computers and some business files in the back of my truck, I took one last look around the house and thought about all we were going to lose.  I said to myself that “it is just stuff.”  But is it really?  No it is not.

My unhealthy tendency to just think of it as stuff is described well by Thomas Merton, “God is more glorified by a man who uses the good things of this life in simplicity and with gratitude than by the nervous asceticism of someone who is agitated about every detail of his self-denial.  The former uses good things and thinks of God.  The later is afraid of good things and consequently cannot use them properly.  He is terrified by the pleasure God has put in things…He imagines God has placed all the good thing of the world before him like bait in a trap.”  It is not a very long journey for me from thinking of the good things He has given as bait (which I do often) to thinking of it as “just stuff.”  And I think I have made progress – but I have not.

The “stuff” is God’s special blessings on us over the years. To enjoy. To delight in. To thank him for.  The “stuff” represents God’s faithfulness to us.  And when we lose these special gifts it’s right to mourn, to grieve, to cry.  God has not called us to die to the good he does for us.  He has not called us to die to the healthy desires and pleasures of life.  The good that he gives us are gifts from him.  So often we feel guilty even unwrapping them much less enjoying them. They are not “just stuff.”

So what is the rest of the story?  Our across the street neighbors lost their house.  Neighbors on our side of the street lost theirs.  Beyond that, every house for a mile and a half is now a pile of ash – 511 homes destroyed.  12,000 acres burned.  The forest is black.  Our five acres was 80% burned, but mostly just ground fire.  The fire burned right up to our foundation…yet our house is standing!   Oh the mysteries of God.

Robert Jonas, a close friend of the late Henri Nouwen, writes “The all-important moment in our spiritual lives is when we understand that we are truly God’s beloved.”  For me this “understanding” is not just a moment in the past, but has to be a continual reality. Today.  When it is not my today, I find myself running away from myself to be someone else, someone God might be more pleased with.  Running to leave behind what I am ashamed of.

“What great love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called children of God.  And that is what we are.” (I John 3:1).  This word from God has been one of the most significant in my life…but one of the hardest to believe.  I so identify with Henri Nouwen when he writes, “the conviction is deeply rooted in us that being loved is something you have to earn…We can scarcely conceive of getting something for nothing.  Everything has to be worked for…You could call it the ‘commercialization’ of love.  Nothing for nothing.  Not even love.”  And so I  “embark on the destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father.”

(Quotes are from Henri Nouwens book, Letters to Marc, pages 49-52)