Fire-Cleansing…Refining
When I think of fire I usual think of the paradoxes surrounding it. While it provides warmth on a cold day…a source of heat to prepare food…even a cleansing/refining ability, it can also do extensive damage to homes…property…even leading to death.
Many of us have been watching the news about the fires in the San Diego, CA area. The 300,000+ acres that have been consumed, the hundreds of homes destroyed, the dozens of people killed. On a much smaller scale, we had a fire on property yesterday. As a bit of a background, during the year we prune trees back and clear brush on our property (68 acres in MX on the MX/US border). In the fall we mow around these piles of limbs and brush and do a “controlled” burn. Yesterday we began these controlled burns and things were looking good. The first 4-5 piles of brush burned as planned and with no issues. It was the next pile that gave us a few issues. The pile started burning fine, but very quickly began to grow out of control. Cosme (head of the Gateway maintenance), Anne (my assistant) and I began to try our best to put the fire out. I was on the Kabota Tractor, Cosme was using the Case Backhoe and Anne was using a shovel. We tried for about 1½ hours to gain control of the fire…to no avail. The fire had now covered at least 25 acres and showed no sign of slowing down. All I could think of was our neighbors homes and their farm land all going up in smoke…perhaps even loss of livestock and maybe even human lives. Things were looking pretty hopeless. After doing everything I could think of I decided prayer might be a good idea (this is one thing God decided to teach me yesterday…go to Him first thing.) Just as I began to pray, I looked up and saw a cross…granted it was disguised as a cactus. I know this must sound pretty crazy, but God used this to speak to me. He is in control and trust HIM! I began to ask Him what I needed to do…where I needed to go. God began to direct my literal steps. The fire quickly began to get under control. The hot spots were put out and as I looked out over the property the work that would have taken us several months was done in three hours. What could have been destructive and even life threatening…was instead cleansing and refining.
God used this to teach me so much…but the main thing was to listen to Him, fear nothing and embrace His refining fire.
BTW-when I went back by the cactus 10 minutes later it was gone…run over by the backhoe. It was there for the very moment I needed to see it.
