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Home . Ministries . Development . Prayer Team . Of Fire and Orange Peels

fireOf Fire and Orange Peels

December 30, 2008

Greetings, Prayer Team!

Most if not all of you have heard already of the fire that destroyed two thirds of our Spokane office. If you’d like more information, you may visit www.uccsda.org for news and pictures, as I do not intend to address specifics of the story here.

But from our little branch office here in College Place, where we are still able to sit at our desks every morning, I will tell you how grateful we are that no one was hurt, that our computer servers were rescued from the building, that God works everything together for good. Even fire.

Would it then be dreadfully insensitive and inappropriate to tell you, this week of all weeks, how much I love fire?

I love the way a candle flares up when you squeeze the oils of an orange peel into its flame; I love how it toasts a Big Frank on a stick; I love how it warms a whole room and twinkles in the middle of the night from a wood stove; I love how it consumes a perfectly aged piece of tamarack; I love how the flames turn colors of green, gold, and blue; I love the way it glows from a kerosene lamp on Christmas eve; I love its heat on a cold night in the woods; I love how God Himself was a pillar of fire in the wilderness and a flame of fire in a burning bush in the desert.

To be honest, however, it had not occurred to me to love it when it destroys, when it eats up those things we love and leaves them a charred ruin.

Yet if we, as people of the Book and children of the Most High God, take our Savior at His word, we can and we must love the fire even now. For “we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

And we are told, “’In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.’ (1 Thessalonians 5:18) This command is an assurance that even the things which appear to be against us will work for our good. God would not bid us be thankful for that which would do us harm.” (Ministry of Healing, 255.)

We know our world is coming to an end soon, and we know our buildings will not stand through the great last fire. We long for that day, and we long for hearts so cleansed by fiery trials here on earth that we will be ready to stand with the seal of our God in our foreheads.

We eagerly await the future life, when “the mysteries that have here annoyed and disappointed us will be made plain. We shall see that our seemingly unanswered prayers and disappointed hopes have been among our greatest blessings.” (Ministry of Healing, 474)

Will you join us in audaciously praising God not only for the blessings we recognize easily, but also for the ones that seem at first to be curses? Will you join us in planting our feet on the Rock of Ages, our only hope of a sure foundation?

Even in the wake of this fire, we ask as well for your prayers as the MiVoden conditional use permit hearing approaches on January 8. We are eager to see the Lord at work on that front also.

On behalf of Patsy Wagner,

Heidi C. Corder
Assistant, Office of Philanthropy