What the fire leaves behind

Last week a wildfire, dancing, licking, devoured the dry grass in the open space near my home. After a white hot sprint toward the dirt road, thwarted by the maintenance worker shoveling dirt off the road onto the grass, the fire surrendered to water when firefighters arrived.

 Early this morning, I walked that road for the first time since, shocked at the black, charred scar the flames left behind. Blackened earth, surreal, somehow holy, stiff with petrified shadows of grass clumps and wildflowers.

Looking at the ruin, the scar, the somehow holy blackness, I tried to imagine the remains of my home standing in it, blending in. I could not.

What I cannot imagine is reality today for my cousin and thousands of her neighbors. Their homes in Bastrop County, Texas, 1,700 of them, are petrified shadows, succumbing to the sea of black. Gone. And I cannot imagine.

15 minutes. The fire is coming. You have to get out. What do you take?

My cousin and her daughter were trying to come home from the grocery store and couldn't get past the roadblock. Her husband and son were home, making those quick decisions, corraling pets -- dogs and cats -- grabbing a high school diploma and driving their cars away, leaving their home to the possibility of fire.

And the fire came.

It always does.

What do you take with you?

Source

The fire comes, the refining fire, burning away all that is not essential.

And when it is gone, what do you have left?

Perhaps it's easier to account the loss. The great grandmother's locket. The wedding gift platter that's held Thanksgiving turkey all these years. The family photos, the baby footprints and handprints. The quilt your grandmother embroidered. The ring your husband gave you for your tenth anniversary. All the things you'll reach for because they hold treasures of the heart -- but they no longer exist outside your heart. And I do not diminish that loss.

Yet, I affirm and raise up what the fire did not take.

Life.

Relationships.

The people (and, yes, most certainly, the pets) that make life shine.

The families pulling together, the neighbors helping neighbors, the strangers wanting to lend a hand.

The beauty of a community rising up from the ashes, resisting the flames and the soot, refusing to be blackened, shriveled shadows and choosing to love one another in ways they may have been unable to imagine before.

Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. (Matthew 6:19-20)

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Linking up with Shanda today for On Your Heart Tuesday.