Close to home

As a reminder that none of us ever knows what the future holds, this was the view out of the addition windows yesterday:

When Matt went outside to pick Reuben up from the bus a little before noon yesterday, he smelled smoke. Coming around the front of our house, he saw smoke. Going a little further he realized it was coming out the vents of our neighbor's roof (and not our addition, as he had feared at first). He ran back inside, alerted me so I could call 911, and continued down to pick up Reuben.

Our neighbor, who lives alone, was not in the house at the time, but he did lose his dog and cat in the fire. He's more upset about his dog than the house. The house was old, and was already in need of plenty of work (it was built by Matt's grandpa's brother two years before Matt's grandpa had our house built), but this was not the way any of us expected it to go.

We all stood there for close to two hours just watching in disbelief.

Reuben mostly thought the trucks were cool. I don't think either of these two really understood the impact of what was happening, but I know my bigger two did. Krassi, poor guy, had to miss out on the action because the addition is still SO full of sheet rock dust that I can't let him play in there until we clean. So we made frequent visits to him through the window.

As we finally came in for lunch (at going on 2pm!) the phone rang, and it was one of my closest friends calling to ask us to pray for her husband who was not hurt, but was in a car accident which resulted in his rental car being totaled.

In rural France.

Where no one speaks English.

Except for the police, a little bit, who don't arrive until two hours have passed. And who manage to tell him to go with the tow truck driver who delivers him with gestures only (no English) to a basement room in a town of 2,300 people (where no one speaks English) where he waits all night for someone to get him to a rental place so he can get a car to get back to Paris so he can fly home.

We may like to think we have plans, and that we have everything under control, and can make things happen the way we want them to, but that is a lie!!

What we do know is that God works everything for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.* So even though I can't promise my children that our house will never burn down, or that our Daddy will never be in a car accident, I can share God's promise with them that whatever comes, God is causing it for the good of his people.

And, really, that's way bigger and better than any promise I could come up with on my own.

*Romans 8:28