These Strange Ashes

These last few days have felt a little strange...going about mundane tasks like watering the flowers or going to the park with the wildfire raging just a few miles from our house. I haven't driven around the small mountain that blocks our view of the burned area yet, and I kind of have been avoiding it. Yesterday, the western edge of the fire that we can see from downtown got menacing and huge again and I think made the hearts of everyone sink to their stomachs.
We later found out that it was a burnout operation to secure that side of the fire to prepare for heavy winds today. I still haven't heard if one of our town's most beloved spots, Lockett Meadow, made it--oh, I just got word as I wrote this that it was spared!
It is going to be quite a different drive to get to Lockett Meadow, but maybe it will make the beauty more spectacular...reminding people of how quickly such beauty can be gone. As I learned years ago while reading Elisabeth Elliot's book, These Strange Ashes, God often burns up the things we think are most important--even GOOD things--to help us turn to him. It is difficult to think that the burning of his beautiful creation could be included in that wisdom, but he knows our propensity to unfaithfulness. So many people here in Flagstaff love and appreciate the forest and are grieving about it. I pray that people will find the proper balance between loving God's creation instead of worshiping it--I've asked myself this week if it is an idol in my life. Living in and enjoying beautiful surroundings is not a God-given right or does not give intrinsic quality to our lives. God is still good in Garbage City in Cairo, Egypt, and he is still good in the charred forest of Flagstaff. This morning, the birds were chirping loudly and the smell of rain was in the air...even a few drops are falling now. I choose to thank God, who controls the floods and fires and rains, not Mother Nature--who, if she existed, would be a strict and severe teacher, despite her beauty.

(Watch the movie on youtube for full screen)

I heard a few people this week say, "It would be beautiful if it wa sn't so sad." It IS sad...but just like I told Samuel when his new toy broke this morning (and I'll admit that I almost cried with him, because that's how God made me), it isn't everything, and it isn't what's most important. In the case of this fire, no lives were lost, no structures were damaged and firefighters, policemen, and everyday citizens worked sacrificially to love their neighbors as themselves. That's pretty important.

(Here's pictures of Garbage City, Cairo...and the amazing cave church that serves the people there--I was reminded of this as an old co-worker visited there last week and posted pictures on Facebook)