Our friends' ranch burned this week. The horses were saved, the buildings spared, but all the land is charred. And another friend's home threatened, and then another. Wildfires are raging in our West Texas countryside, and the church now has a line-item in the budget labeled "Hotel Rooms for Fire Evacuees." We can often smell the smoke in town, sometimes even see ash fall as we walk to the car and go about our normal routine. Our world is normal, while our friends have been thrown into chaos, everything they have built being threatened by fire.
And in the middle of it, sometime around two in the morning, I sat in the back yard, willing the rain storm I could see in the west to please come our way and collide with the huge orange glow south of town.
Collide.
Won't you come, Lord? Won't you bring the power of who You are and collide with the fires that rage in the earth? Won't you cause Your presence to rain upon the mess we have made, bringing life where we have caused destruction?
I sat for almost an hour, and I couldn't help but stretch my arms out to the sky and with one hand touch the storm and with the other hand touch the fire and with both hands push. Push them together and pray. I prayed the collision that began 2,000 years ago with a baby born in the manger would continue in my life and in the lives of my children and in the lives of my neighbors being ravaged by the drought and the heat and the winds. And I prayed that I would bring the collision, that I would carry it with me and unleash it upon the works of the enemy. I prayed that my life would bring the power of who He is to the fires that rage in the earth and that I would rain His presence, bringing life to those who need to drink of Him.
