FIERY BLESSINGS - PART TWO

Authorities lifted their roadblocks yesterday on one of the highways closest to where wildfire broke out four days ago, and our son Dave was finally able to get to the family farm.  He found that the only building on the property, a shed where he’d been brooding his chickens, was still intact!  The fire had burned virtually all the vegetation he hadn't irrigated this year.  But the part of the pasture where he'd been grazing his chickens was greener (due to the chicken poop acting as fertilizer and all of his diligent watering) and that part didn't burn.  The composting area and an area where he had been depositing his grey water were at the opposite corners of the shed from his chicken pasture, and the vegetation in those areas was also greener and more moist, so the shed was basically surrounded with a green shield of protection.
 
Firefighters had obviously broken through the gate and also cut barbed wire to access the property, which was on the front line of their defense of the entire neighborhood.  It was probably much easier and more strategic for them to defend the farm’s open space and the little shed surrounded by green than to defend the road between the farm and the houses, which was lined with trees and close to a lot of structures.  Because Dave’s car and his brother Brian’s RV were near the green pasture and the shed, they also got spared.
 
Later, a neighbor stopped by and filled in more of the story.  He and a friend had stayed behind after almost everyone else who lived in Washoe City had fled.  Within a few hours of the fire’s onset, the neighbor saw a fireball land in a clump of sagebrush on our farm and set it ablaze.  So they jumped the fence and used hand tools to extinguish the flames.  Without their prompt and heroic action, the fire would have quickly spread through the dry autumn grass and set the whole neighborhood on fire.
 
When our neighbor told a passing Sheriff’s deputy about what had just happened, the deputy radioed for more help from the fire department.  That relieved him, because his own pleas with the fire department had gone unheeded.  By the time more men and equipment arrived, the fire had jumped the freeway and most of the hundred acres of state land between Washoe Lake and Washoe City were burning.  But firefighters broke into our farm and were able to thwart the fire’s progress.  
 
Who knows how many other places around Washoe City were also blessed by the prompt response of first responders and the radical acts of kindness of the neighbor who stayed behind.  That same neighbor and his friend hand-dug trenches on other properties not their own, to stop flames from advancing from the fields into the subdivision.  That neighbor is new to the area and didn’t really know most of the people he was serving, just like our son Dave just started raising chickens on his brother Brian’s property last spring, and didn’t really know how his farming would help protect nearby homes from wildfire.
 
How amazing is that?  We’re thanking God today for how everything seems to be falling into place yet again to turn tragedy into triumph.  We need His faithfulness again today to prevent what authorities are calling a “particularly dangerous situation” from unraveling into a major calamity.  Experts say that the high winds forecasted to arrive later this morning could cause the wildfire to make a huge leap into environmentally sensitive and highly populated areas.  But we are believing that the God who crafted all that rugged beauty and made all those people to love Him and love like Him will surely keep that from happening.
 
Rains come, fire lay down and winds be stilled, in Jesus’s name!