I Don't Know

It's been two weeks.  In some ways it feels like an eternity.
We're starting to mark things as BF and AF.
"Before the Fire" and "After the Fire".

If BF was an energizing time of seeing people gather with a common mission to plant a church and eventually build a ministry centre; then AF has been marked as a time of sweet communion as people have gathered with a common mission to glorify God and edify one another.
The truth is: Our mission hasn't changed one bit.

And so this week routines returned.
In the midst of phone calls, emails and insurance reports we returned to school.
Tears flowed a little less. *

We gathered around the dinner table.  We ate.  We laughed.  We reminded one another of manners.  We discussed our days.  We returned to our reading from the Children's Bible In 365 Stories.

And should we call it irony or coincidence or an interesting happen-stance or somehow God's timing, the next story in our reading was that of Elijah and Ahab and the Showdown at Mt. Carmel.
Really?

It didn't even cross my mind that BF we were in the midst of the Elijah story.  And here we are, today's reading ... a story entitled, "God Sends Fire".

Could we not have been at a nice little story about a little guy fighting a giant, or maybe even a guy, a boat and a big flood?

"God Sends Fire"

Here's the Cliff-note version: Elijah is a prophet of God.  The people of Israel are wishy-washy about who God is.  Elijah challenges Ahab and the prophets of Baal to a showdown on Mt. Carmel.  They both build an altar, sacrifice some animals and wait for their God to answer with fire.

If this all sounds like gobbly-gook read the story in I Kings 18.  It's a crazy one.  

Basically Elijah says, "The god who answers by fire - he is God."  Baal doesn't answer at all.  Elijah pours buckets and buckets of water on his altar and then, as crazy as it sounds, God sends fire.

God sends fire.
And the people of Israel declare, "The LORD - He is God."

We finish reading the story.
We discuss the story.
No mention of our fire.  We're kind of caught up in the craziness of Elijah's fire.

And then she says it, my curious one who always seems to ask the hard questions:
"If God could send Elijah fire, 
then why couldn't God stop our fire?"

Oh dear.
The tears.
They flow again.

How do we answer this question?
An honest question.
If God could send Elijah fire, they why couldn't God stop our fire?

I don't know.
The most honest answer to a heartfelt question.
I don't know.

To my curious one who voices the questions that we are all asking I simply say, I don't know.  But what I do know is this: our God loves us, our God will not leave us, our God is worthy of our praise, and we will, like the Israelites declare:
"The LORD - He is God."

* Side note re: tears.  They come at the most inopportune times, like for example in the middle of Body Pump class. Finally made it to the gym and I can't even make it through one class without tearing up.  Not doing much for the tough girl personna I'm going for (!).