Easy Come; Easy Go

Most of us have heard this adage since we were little kids, "Easy come; easy go." It can be applied to all sorts of situations, but I have a particular situation in mind. In May, 1992, our house in Broadmoor subdivision suffered from a huge conflagration (a house fire). In about eight minutes from being discovered by Jon (who, in turn, found Mike). They got out of the house with their pajamas on. Cal and I were at church that Sunday morning; Jon and Mike were going to the second service. In those eight minutes, about 85% of our roof burned off our ranch-style home.

Mike called the church and a deacon told me about taking the phone call. Mike said, "Dorable, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is Jon and I are ok. The bad news is the house has burned down." I was shocked. After making sure that Cal was taken care of, a friend and I drove to my house. On the way I prayed, "Lord, I don't know what you are doing, but help Mike and I to glorify your name even in this situation."

As friends came to our house after the church service, I repeated to many of them, "Isn't God good?" Of course they looked at me in disbelief. It was sort of an odd thing to say ... if one were merely talking about the obvious loss of all our worldly possessions. But I wasn't talking about that at all. I was expressing praise and gratitude to God for sparing the lives of my sweet husband and my younger son. When I compared the loss of all of our stuff with the idea of having a four year old in the burn unit at the Baton Rouge General Hospital, it seemed that we came out pretty good. No one was hurt or burned in any way. We weren't going to the emergency room or the funeral home. In my economy (and God's), I was stating the obvious truth that God is good (in the good times and the hard times.)

Interestingly, my sister recently lost her house in Hurricane Ike. Karen and her husband live about 30 yards from the water's edge of Calcasieu Lake. The wave action and flood surge compromised the structure of their wooden house. It also dug a 15 x 8 ft (deep) hole in their yard. The surge squashed a stock trailer like one would crush a soda can. Amazing. Today, they have snakes in the house and a backed-up sewerage in their master bedroom. Probably, the wave action and wind and the FEMA trailer from Hurricane Rita bashed their house so much that it broke the pipes under the house. Subsequently, the water from the lake got into their lines and caused everything to back-up. Ugh.

God is so faithful. We walked through our loss fairly well and so far Karen and her family are doing the same. Praise the Lord. What do people do when they don't have a relationship with the Lord. I don't know. I'm glad I'll never have to find out what that is like. I'm already a member of the family. Are you?

Much love, murphy