This is the third year of you leaving forever. I wonder if God told you in heaven what He was going to do here for us this week?
You died in our garage three years ago, and on last Wednesday at 10:45 it went up in flames.
I’m glad it happened in February, exactly one week before you left.
I was visiting Grandma when I heard our house was on fire. The first thing I cared about was that everyone was alive. Once I was assured of that, nothing else mattered. I’ve lost my son. What is a house? It’s nothing, nothing compared to the loss of you.
“Our God is a consuming fire”. I saw that first hand. Everything in the garage was melted beyond recognition. It felt like God was putting His stamp on the evil that happened there the night you died. He hates the curse of the earth, the sickness that consumed your mind, the darkness that whittled away your sweet boy soul.
Before the fire, our house was all we had left of you. People couldn’t understand how we could live where you hung yourself. But it was also the house your sunshine curls grew up in, where your little red shoes zipped around on your scooter, and your messy baby hands learned to eat yogurt. All the happy memories were there, too. And it was all we had left. It felt wrong to part with it.
But now we are released. God is starting a new thing. We’ll take you with us but we’ll leave behind where you died. It is no mistake that the fire originated exactly where your eyes would have landed as they closed for the last time. The last thing you saw on earth is now melted with fire. Just like this earth will be when God makes a new one.
For now, we are stuck on this celestial ball, looking to our Father and exercising faith to make it through all that is appointed for us. But soon, we won’t need faith because we will see and know all that we have believed is True.
Dare I call it a gift?
“Call upon Me in the day of distress; I shall rescue you, and you will glorify Me.” Psalm 50:15
Some may call it an unbelievable tragedy, but this day of distress was appointed by the Lord. We get to see His rescue, we get to exercise hard wrought faith that He is all He claims to be, and this gives Him glory. What a privilege to be chosen to glorify our God! He is proven True in a way that could not be proven otherwise. We trust Him, yet again.
Dear God, I’m glad it’s gone. Thank you for burning Tristan’s death bed with Your consuming fire. That’s how I feel about it, too. There’s nothing left on this earth except to glorify You. Help me to do that. Save me from myself. Give Tristan a kiss for me. In Jesus name to Amen.
