Home Burning

We're wrapping up the school-year here (don't mock us) and I (Jim) am really looking forward to a trip back home.  I've been homesick quite a lot this term.  Totally understandable when you consider this trip will be the first time I get to see so many faces and places in a little over two years.  I really wrestled with this homesickness for the past several weeks.  It's pretty clear that as Christians this world is not our home and I keep feeling like we should be yearning for heaven.  I felt like I was getting a handle this and then my facebook feed blew up with pictures of home burning.

I've been choked up seeing pictures of the neighborhoods I used to ride a mountain bike through on free weekends in flames.  Queens Canyon and the hills behind Glen Eyre, the punch bowls I used to hike beyond when Heather was here in Kenya and I was lonely and which Benjer Mcveigh fell into chest-deep in mid-November.  He wasn't as concerned about hypothermia as the wet floppy disk in his pocket. The crazy hike I took up to Palmer Reservoir and back - scorched.  Along with that lonely little ridge with the mineshaft that I used to visit for solitude to pray and journal.  The mule-deer shed I left under a rock there was probably eaten by rodents long ago but I doubt I could recognize the place today anyway.

Closer to Woodland Park, Nichols Reservoir; where Faith caught her first fish, where we took family picnics and where one evening Kendal Hovel and I fished the miracle rise; has already burned.  The Rainbow Gulch trail From Rampart Reservoir which I used to hike home in the dark, fish in hand, is probably gone by now.

It's been interesting to watch from the other side of the world knowing there is nothing we can do.  Heather and I were trying to figure out if our house is in a pre-evacuation zone or a voluntary evacuation zone or if there's a difference (and ultimately deciding is doesn't really matter).  So I've waited impatiently for updates (as Colorado sleeps) and done ridiculous things like use Google Earth to determine that the fire perimeter map from late Tuesday night Mountain Time shows that the fire is precisely 3.47 miles from our cozy little 95-year-old house in Woodland Park but that it would have to burn through approximately 1/2 a mile of other homes to get there.  I've also noticed how uncomfortably THICK the trees are in that part of town.  And I've also used Google Earth to determine that yesterday when the wind blew this fire into Colorado Springs, parts traveled much more than 3.47 miles.  Most of that shouldn't really matter because our stuff is no longer in that house.  But it still matters a lot to me.

All this has made me realize how attached I am to this life.  I am concerned about a place I no longer live - and wouldn't have lived for long, regardless.  Do I have the same attachment to my eternal home?  Am I as concerned about my eternal home?

Equally as important, I've been reminded how messed up this world is.  Living in Kenya helps highlight how unjust this fallen world is.  But these fires do the same.  The world should be a beautiful place and peaceful place.  But it's not and this makes me long for my eternal home.

Finally, the power of destruction in that fire is amazing.  The first pictures I saw showed a massive mushrooming cloud of smoke reaching to 30,000 feet and I've seen video of people staring at the flames, awestruck as they devour houses.  God is described a consuming fire (Heb 12:29). I forget this aspect of God's character.  A God of Love, yes I remember that - and with it Grace.  But I overlook His power - and forget to tremble.

Let's be longing for our eternal home but lift up prayers for His kingdom here.  Let's pray for Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, Green Mountain Falls and Woodland Park and remember He's a powerful God.