Ashes

Ashes

3/24/15

Anyone who has ever witnessed a fire until its completion will testify of how intense the heat and flames are of that fire.  The end results of such fires bring a permanent substance that is messy and useless but still signifies of the previous event in a way that brings finality at the same time.  Ashes do not render much service for the future on a constructional basis but they do serve as a continual reminder of something that stands in the history of our minds and experiences.  Many times we look at ashes and remember the tragedy that struck such emotional responses at the time of the fire, but should be the entire memories that reconcile our thoughts and beliefs of godly, personal and societal living.

Not too many people like to recount their personal memories of fire, nor would the majority of people enjoy spending time watching their lives literally go up in smoke while standing and watching a fire destroy a close personal item.  After the fire has been extinguished and safe to enter the burned area, walking through the ashes is many times more painful than watching those memories being actively destroyed.  The finality of ash sends a permanent shockwave through our internal lives and realization that complete and final loss has occurred.

When a fire begins the heat is weak and slow to develop, as is the flames of said fire.  As any person that operates a grill or stove and they will tell you that when you turn on the instrument it takes time for all of the settings to reach temperature.  The same goes for a fire in that when it is young its potential energy is gaining and the fire itself is at its peak for extinguishing but when a non controlled fire has started, it is already at its peak potential before help arrives.  It is at this point when the fire is the most destructive for it has used up its ignition points and is now readily consuming the organic materials within the burning substance to reach this peak.  It is also at this point when the organic fuel is consumed a lasting residue appears in the form of what we call ash.

Ashes are the result of a fire when it is done with using up all of the energy and fuel of the substance that it was burning.  There is not much use for ashes for there are no usable contents that remain after the fire has left that area for another place to continue.  It does not matter if a fire remains small and contained within a boundary, after the fire has used up all of its sources the ashes that remain can serve no organic purpose any longer.  Even if there are numerous materials and fuel sources within the burning structure, the fire will burn use all possible sources before it dies out, unless help gets there before total damage results.

Anyone remember back in the early 1980s when a relatively unknown and previously dormant volcano erupted in the state of Washington?  This mountain was and still is named as Mount St Helens and it is still producing earthquakes and soft rumblings decades after it erupted.  Up until the day of its eruption there had been significant warnings of an eruption but hardly anyone took them seriously and on that eventful day the skies turned black and the earth shook violently and the top of the mountain exploded thousands of feet into the air and to one side and the result of that explosion created an ash cloud and molten rock cloud that traveled thousands of miles in many directions.

After Mount St Helens calmed down the results of the explosion became known and while only a few people lost their lives that day many other life forms were completely destroyed.  Literally, millions of trees and miles of landscape were totally burned to the ground, with many rivers being contaminated with poison molten rock and sulfur gases streaming down from the mountain site.  Log jams in the rivers created havoc for people trying to reach where known human activity was before the eruption.  Most living creatures could not breathe the air because of the chemicals, smoke and ash still falling from the atmosphere and resulted in countless numbers of animals to lose their lives.

It was a result of this huge explosion and fire that caused the damage in and around the western region of the nation.  It affected the area for years and in some areas destroyed back then, teams of researchers are still gathering information about that site today and piecing together that puzzle.  If one goes to this national park and forest they can still see some of the permanent scars that the volcano created and if one uses modern equipment they can see the slow rising bulge within the crater of this mountain, another sign that one day this volcano can repeat its actions and bring more havoc to the area.

There is not much that humanity can do to prevent this type of activity from occurring.  However, we can understand the warning signs enough to change our habits concerning this volcano and try our best to limit our permanent inhabitance of the area.  Yes the setting is scenic and beautiful to walk and hike through.  Yes it an area that is quite peaceful and tranquil even though it has a graphic history.  It is important that we take all of these historical features and put them into perspective and choose wisely and accordingly.  While physical fires could be the result of what is predicted for this society and other world societies may not be accurate, but some type of fire shall occur that will produce just as much ash as a real fire would produce.  Real fire may accompany this other type of fire but I do know that whichever fire comes about, ash will be produced and shall dictate our destruction, recovery and restoration.

Again during this time frame in the early 1980s my family and I were living in a small town north of Houston, Texas when another small yet graphic tragedy occurred.  While this incident never made national news and it never even reached regional news but the news of this tragedy did reach one family and our community and it made its mark as the ashes came into being.  The accident occurred late one night to a friend of mine was supposed to be in bed asleep but had left her house and went out with some acquaintances.  Little did she know that this would be the last time she left her house and that she would be in a terrible accident and burned alive.  The news struck the family hard, as it would any family, but even though this particular family knew of God they literally fell apart and sunk deeper into their troubles and is still feeling the effects of that single tragedy long ago.

God recently shared with us an article concerning the devastating times of Job and how his world came crashing to the ground in a series of terrible events.  One of the more fascinating passages of this story is when Job looked at all of his personal destruction and walked into the burned ashes and sat down in the middle of them.  With his wife begging him to curse God and die, Job instead lifted up his eyes unto God and gave thanks for everything that God had given him and that he understood that if God could give things to people that He could take them away as well.  This man had literally lost everything with the exception of his wife.  He even had nasty health problems that caused him great pain yet he worshiped God and did not curse God for any bit of these allowances.  This is the last of the three good examples that this article gives about how fire destroyed certain structures and left ashes in its place.  It does not matter what the structure is, the structure is the subject of the burning and what remains afterwards.

The question remains is how would you react in times such as these.  How would our town act if a tornado ripped through its downtown as it did in Joplin, Missouri a few years ago?  How would our nation regroup and truly figure out as to why things of this type of “fire” occurred?  Would we even understand exactly what transpired or would we write it off and dismiss it on a human level?  The personal aspect of the fire would be just that, individual.  I have been witness to a couple of hurricanes and have felt the ground shake under my feet when earthquakes occurred.  The current town that I live in has been spared from any major disasters so far, but the day is not over and anything could occur before I leave this building.

That leads me to our nation and to the society that we currently observe.  I do not believe it would be too hard to arrive at the answer to the question I posed in the paragraph above when it comes to our nation and western society.  What amazes me is that when these terrible events occur, we stand in shock and in total disbelief because of what happened, as if to say “how dare they attack us in this manner”.  It is at this point that we can be assured that society and its living conditions have no clue about why things of this sort occur, and to what the origins of those acts really come.

Our society has become so anti God that we are continually pushing Him out of our existence and it is through this process that a great catastrophe will occur.  When humans voluntarily tell God that “they can handle things” God allows them to do so. However, what humanity forgets is that God has placed protective coverings around all of His people and if we voluntarily remove them, our enemy will have no restraints when he decides to attack.  It is through these attacks and lack of protection that will define our fire and measure our ashes afterwards. 

We have deleted God from our daily lives so much that we do not feel the need to fear Him.  We refuse to listen to His warnings and to adhere to His ways, making up our own selfish laws that give up “more control” over God and the lands that He has given us.  But this time the focus is on the remnants of our societies after the damage has been done and how we will react towards the ashes.  As it stands now and with our reactions towards the past problems, I do not feel like we will truly understand what the ashes mean and the reasons as to why they were created.

Will it take us centuries to understand what has occurred or will we get our hearts back into line with God’s laws and allow our restoration to be easier than harder?  When we make choices it then becomes our responsibility to live up to those choices and suffer the consequences or to imbibe in the blessings that each choice brings.  When we separate ourselves from God we take His presence and knowledge out of the picture and then replace it with human understanding.  This selfish setting places us at a disadvantage because we leave out the eternal and accept only the physical.  If allowed long enough this thinking will eventually phase out the enemy and therefore justify everything natural as being true and factual; just as Eve did when she made the choice to falsify God’s Law and then eat of the fruit.

Eve probably had no idea of the physical and eternal consequences of her and Adam’s actions that day.  And as a society we have no idea what our consequences (ashes) shall be either.  God has given us some great examples of how humans handle disastrous situations in this article.  I wish that I could say that we would take the road that Job did and have the heart that understands why things occurred, but from what description the Bible gives about humanity when things fall apart, I do not believe too many people will take His warnings factually.

This article is not all bad news there is some excellent news to be shared.  The ashes that we will be witnessing can be avoided!!  All we have to do is to turn our hearts back to God and allow Him to again be the center of our lives.  Everyone in the world wants peace, happiness and prosperity but all of those experiences come from God and if we tune Him out of our lives, so will those blessings.  It is a simple choice that we have and we still have a few moments to change our status but unless we make this change, we will begin to see the ashes fall from the sky in quick manner. 

God loves His children in ways and manners that our human minds and hearts cannot fathom.  His love for us is overwhelming if we study its presence.  But in order for us to receive and to know His love we must, we must obey His laws and His Word. We cannot continue to indulge ourselves in worldly practices and believe that all will remain a box of chocolates.  Our lives shall change according to our choices and the ashes may rain down upon our societies for months, years, decades or even centuries.  But it will all be due to the choices that we have made and how long it takes us to figure out that God is the Creator of everything and not humans.

Restoration comes with pain of its own but this pain comes through a purifying fire and not a destructive fire.  God’s fire comes from His heart and will seek out every impurity that we harbor in order to bring us closer to His will.  The destructive fires have no respecter of structures and will seek out fuel in order to consume as much as possible to stay “alive”, leaving nothing but ashes in its path.  I have no idea what structures our enemy will choose to burn in our society, they may be physical in stature or they may be economic in structure or financial through losses, or a combination of all, but I do know that whatever the fire maybe we can skip this portion and remove ourselves from becoming ash.  Two kingdoms and two fires, which one will we choose?

DLB