She bends to her her knees as her eye is drawn to a familiar object in the midst of so much that is unfamiliar. The smell of smoke..a home kept clean and neat through the years now covered in soot and debris and ashes. But there is a photograph, a paper…something that calls to mind a cherished memory…a child…a grandchild. A grief is stirred. She weeps, but for a moment only. She rises to her feet and is met by the compassion of a sister in Christ and she is surrounded by love. Deep in her heart she knows that these things now lost though many are not to be compared to the treasures she holds that fire cannot consume. A God rich in mercy and grace, the body of Christ, the glory that awaits.
And then she tells her husband “this house has been a gift from God and what’s happening now is a gift from God too.” She’s right.
“The root of faith can never be torn from the godly breast, but clings so fast to the inmost parts that, however faith seems to be shaken or to bend this way or that, its light is never so extinguished or snuffed out that it does not at least lurk as it were beneath the ashes.”
—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.21
lifted from Of First Importance
