I watched and waited in silent panic as I began looking at Facebook and saw friends saying they were running from their houses. That some had even lost their homes. I began flipping through news sites and watched in horror as my home town was quickly being engulfed in flames and friends and family began evacuating or preparing for the worst. I looked out my window towards the North and saw big billows of clouds against the evening sky, and realized they weren't clouds at all. I sat there terrified... fires are everywhere, and the town I live in now is well known for its summer fires... what if a fire started here? We might not have anywhere to go... all of our family were close to the fires or already evacuated...
It was then that I realized the only thing I could do was pray. Pray for rain, pray for the people fighting the fires, pray for the people evacuating and those helping the ones who were evacuating. And then I found something else to pray for as a dear friend was far away struggling with their health. Stuck in a hospital fighting for their life. I felt like all I did for days was pray, and pray, and cry out to God... and well just cry in general... I don't cry... I have a problem... I very seldom get full tears even if I want them to come... so crying is a BIG deal for me...
I felt my life begin to flip out of control... AGAIN... it's been flipping out of control a lot this year, and I've only recently started to get back up on my feet rather than being face planted on the floor completely stunned.
God why is this all happening? Why does it feel like my world's ending? WHY?!
As He began to reveal things to me, my friend, JoAnne, sent me a message saying she had been struggling the same sort of things as me as far as the fire went.
"...and He reminded me of how He doesn't always give us what we want but what we need. And He gave me this image of rain over people and the rain symbolized His love and just how people are all gathering closer together and being able to show Christ's love to our neighbors even more than we could before. He said even though He's not pouring out the physical rain when we want it, He's pouring out His love on His people so they would draw nearer together and nearer to Him."
I sat there and went, yeah... that was the conclusion I was coming to, just maybe not as elloquent!
During times like this we need to draw nearer to Him, closer to Him, pray even more fervently than we should already be doing. It's sad, but sometimes it take our world being rocked to get us to focus on what's important; our friends, family, but most importantly our Abba!
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity said, "God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it."
Are you gonna take it? Or leave it? Are you going to draw nearer to Him? Or toss Him aside?
This songs been stuck in my head for a while, and I think it fits perfectly with everything happening right now... "This is my prayer in the fire, in weakness or trial or pain, there is a faith proved of more worth than gold! So refine me Lord through the flame! I will bring praise, I will bring praise! No weapon formed against me shall remain. I will rejoice, I will declare, God is my victory and He is here!"
So I will draw nearer, and I will learn to rejoice even in the tough times, bringing praise to the awesome and powerful God of the universe!
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