Field Fire
Let me lay out the place I grew up in. My parent’s house was a 100-year-old farm house with 3 bedrooms (small) and one bathroom. They owned 25 acres of property of which 5 acres was tillable (farmable), a 4-car cinder block garage, an older garage (my Dad stored wool there), and a big barn. Assuming the house and outbuilding added up to approximately 2 acres, that left 18 acres of hills, creeks, field grass and trees.
Dad raised sheep and had a herd of about 30 of them. The pasture, as we referred to the non-tillable, non-building area, was divided into 3 sections that my Dad would let the sheep graze. He rarely let them graze the biggest section, the back pasture because that is where the creeks, forest and the river boarder were.
Occasionally, a sheep would die. Dad didn’t have a backhoe to dig a grave and, I believe at that time, it wasn’t illegal for him to cremate them in the middle pasture (the one behind the barn). This middle pasture had a ravine that Dad would accumulate consumable material to use if he had to Cremate a sheep. Besides the bottom of the ravine, there was field grass all around and all the way to the back of the barn.
Dad was cremating an deceased sheep and the fire had burned down to just a few embers and Dad went into the house. My sister and I had been there with him (my mom had to work every other weekend at the hospital) and playing at the edges of the fire. I had the great idea of spreading the fire to the field grass. It took off before either one of us could slow or stop it. It was spreading rapidly towards the barn (which was also over 100 years old).
I finally gave up trying to slow or stop it and ran to get my Dad. I think I couldn’t find him (after frantically looking) and returned to the fire only to find out that it burned out before getting to the barn.
About 10 years later, I was home from college (my parents and sister were on a trip and I was watching the house). An adjacent field of about 50 or so acres of wheat had been harvested but the straw hadn’t been bailed. Lightening struck and set the field ablaze. I uncomfortably watched the fire quickly consume the straw as it headed towards my parents’ house and all those feelings of dread that I experienced as a kid came flooding back. Similarly, it burned itself out before getting close to my parents’ house. Such are the unthought of dangers of living in a rural farming area.
These memories came back to me this morning listening to Pastor Patrick talk about the prophesy concerning John the Baptist.
“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts. “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” - Malachi 4:1-6 ESV
I wish I could convey the abject fear I experienced as a little boy watching a fire grow and head towards the barn that my Dad had so much time, effort and money invested in. I was worried about punishment, sure, but I was also worried about the hay and straw stored in the barn as well as the portion of his flock laying in there.
This is the kind of destruction Malachi was alluding to but on a much larger perspective.
