Fire

From Psalm 104 of Eugene Peterson's The Message: O my soul, bless God! God, my God, how great you are! beautifully, gloriously robed, dressed up in sunshine, and all heaven stretched out for your tent. You built your palace on the ocean deeps, made a chariot out of clouds and took off on wind-wings. You commandeered winds as messengers, appointed fire and flame as ambassadors.

There was a big fire here in Kansas City earlier this week. Apparently some bad wiring in a bar set off a huge fire that engulfed a large portion of an city block, leaving a whole group of businesses at 75th and Wornall with nothing but charred remains and a horrible sense of loss. However, in a short sound byte kind of interview, I heard one of the owners bravely report that there must be some reason this happened, and she would rebuild... in fact, the new business would be bigger and better!

I don't know why, but I thought of the Hebrew people entering the Promised land. God is God, and doesn't have to explain Himself to us... therefore, sometimes God's Word can be pretty troubling. One of those times is when the Hebrews were commanded to charge into the Promised Land and destroy all who were dwelling there. To someone seeking God, one glance at the book of Joshua could very well derail their budding trust in Him... How could a loving God command His people to wantonly murder a whole generation of peoples and cultures who lived in the wrong place at the wrong time? Number one, we could probably never understand the darkness of the Canaanite culture... the evil is beyond our comprehension... child sacrifice, sacred prostitution, oppression and mutilation of the innocent and vulnerable... etc. It was a religious culture completely given over to the very idea of evil, and God had had enough. So, He sent His people, the people He had promised to bless, into the land to take it back for His sake.

Number two, this was not an eternal mandate... or excuse to wage "Holy War" with anyone who opposed the Hebrews throughout their history - rather, it was a specific empowerment of a specific people, for a specific time frame, for a specific reason. It was bloody, it was violent, it was vile, it was repulsive... but in the bigger picture of human history, it was necessary according to God. Do you know what else it is...? It is a perfect metaphor of our hearts. Like it or not, we are born into this sinful, fallen world and participate in it. For instance... I'll bet no one had to teach you to lie when you were a child... it just came natural the first time you were backed into a corner by your actions and felt compelled to get free by whatever means necessary. The bottom line is that we all store up some form of sin in our hearts... no one is exempt. But by His grace, God has given us a means of "waging war" on the evil inside of us, by coming to a place of recognition of the sin, and overwhelming desire to have it destroyed.

Repentance.

Our God is a God who both builds up and tears down. I'm sure the Kansas City business owner who lost it all in a consuming fire would not prefer to start from scratch all over again... but funny thing... when something is utterly destroyed, it creates an opportunity for something new, something better, something exciting, something meaningful... something unimaginable when life continues along at status-quo. Jesus put it this way: Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal (John 12:24-25).

That Jesus. He had a way with words. But have you noticed...? He never said anything He wasn't willing to live out in His own life... no matter the cost.