“Lord, if I have to rebuild this house for it only to be burned down again, just to bring one person to Jesus Christ… let’s do it!”
Absolute destruction. Those were my exact thoughts upon driving into a decimated neighborhood on my very first day. Up until that point in time, I had only ever seen the result of wildfires in the far west. Out there, you would see one house or structure burned down, then a lot of acreage, and then another house or maybe even a few… but here, things were different. Here, the entire neighborhood was just gone; not a single house remained. I couldn’t help but think back to my childhood and our tight-knit community, our many memories, burning to the depths of our basements. I can’t even begin to put myself in those shoes.
As I drove to the meeting place on that very first day, the lyrics from Brandon Lake’s song Graves into Gardens came through my speakers.
""You turn mourning to dancing You give beauty for ashes You turn shame into glory You’re the only one who can You turn graves into gardens You turn bones into armies You turn seas into highways You’re the only one who can.”
Mourning into dancing. Beauty for ashes. Shame into glory. Graves into gardens. Bones into armies. Seas into highways. As I sang those words that morning, I did believe them. I did believe that God was the only one able to transform. I knew that bringing Jesus into these neighborhoods was the only way, the greatest need, and of upmost importance. I still do believe those things, very much so, but it was some of the homeowners, over the next few weeks, who showed me what that looked like in real time. It was the homeowners who displayed an incredible faith and amazing hope despite their losses. It is the homeowners who will forever be etched in my mind when I think of beauty from ashes.
I usually start these posts off with a scripture, but the words that you see at the top of this entry are not from the Bible… they are the words of a prayer. In fact, they are the words of a prayer from the mouth of a homeowner as he welcomed our team onto he and his wife’s property. Their house had been completely destroyed. As with all of the homeowners, it wasn’t just possessions and years or even lifetimes of items collected that were now gone, it was also the four walls that boxed in years and years of memories that had fallen to the ground.
I want you to pause and think about that for just one moment. The place that you call home now sits in a heap of ashes on the dirt of the earth. Your grandmother’s china is shattered. The rosary that’s been passed down through the family cannot be found. Passports and birth certificates are disintegrated. Your wedding band was found, but the diamond is missing. The dining room table, where your family came together every night, is gone. These are all scenarios that we ran into with various homeowners. Think about that.
It’s absolutely heartbreaking and even having been there and having directly heard stories from the homeowners, both about their lifetimes and about the day of the fire, I still struggle to grasp this storm that they have walked through. You and I will likely never understand the fullness of their experience and now they are on the other side, alive thanks to the Lord, but with nothing.
God… is there really beauty in the ashes?
I want to invite you to sit with the words of this homeowner again.
“Lord, if I have to rebuild this house for it only to be burned down again, just to bring one more person to Jesus Christ… let’s do it!”
This homeowner’s words have replayed in my mind nearly every day since I left his home. Would I be willing to say that? Would you be willing to say that?
This man had weathered his storm. The majority of people don’t go through the experience of complete devastation such as he had even once in their lives, yet here he was, within a month of the fire, offering another go-around with the storm.
BUT WHY? “…Just to bring one more person to Jesus Christ.”
Oh friends. What would it look like for us to live in this way? We can believe the lyrics of a song as we sing it at the tops of our lungs. We can know that God holds the power to transform and that Jesus is the anchor for our hope. But what does it look like to live in a way that would allow us to say, “Lord, if you have to take me through a storm, even if that means losing everything that I have, to bring ONE MORE person to you… have your way with me!”
I would argue that it would’ve been easier for the homeowner to say, “Lord, if you need to physically take my life just to bring one more person to Christ, it’s yours!” Rather his statement was inviting the Lord to take everything from this life, everything that the world tells us to build our lives around, yet leave him here… in the rubble and ash of what used to be… if it meant bringing one more person to know Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of their lives.
Some of you may be reading this and are thinking that the homeowner is crazy. Some of you may be reading this and be thinking, “well, I would die for Christ.” Others of you may be reading this and aren’t so sure what to think yet. Regardless, I want to challenge you in considering the following:
1. What would it look like for you to surrender the life AROUND you for Jesus?
2. Are you willing to do that for JUST ONE more person to come to Christ?
Devastation is heartbreaking and so often, it does lead us to ask, “why, God? How can you let this happen?”
Having recently read through the book of Ezekiel, I am reminded of the often repeated phrase, “Then you will know that I am the Lord.”
God doesn’t plan ‘bad things’, but He does use them. The Israelites were in exile… far from their homeland, yet God gave them hope in knowing that He is Lord. In the midst of loss, devastation, and ashes, it was obvious that this is the heart of that to which the homeowner clung. He believed and knew that his hope was not in the ashes beneath our feet, but in the great I AM; the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Will you join me today in surrendering your life and the things in your life, for the eternal life of just one more person?
“Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.” Ezekiel 36:23
Dear homeowner, thank you for this encouragement. Thank you for showing us what it looks like to live in a way that believes there is beauty from the ashes. You are a bright light in the midst of a dark storm. Your true treasure is surely being stored in a place where it cannot be destroyed, even by the hottest flames. Keep shining bright, my brother.
With much love,
Your sister in Christ
