By Dr. Lisa Dunne
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When we heard the doorbell ring at 2:30 AM, we knew something was wrong. Our neighbor had rushed over to make sure we had seen the evacuation warning: the fire on the mountain behind our homes had shifted and our neighborhood was in danger. The images from the LA fires were emblazoned in our minds, and we immediately felt the weight of the moment.
At 4pm the previous afternoon, we had seen smoke rising from the Otay Wilderness behind our neighborhood, a wild and massive plume of grey smoke that flooded the airwaves within seconds. Our neighborhood park, which is normally empty and quiet, was filled and bustling with people taking pictures and making speculations. Many remembered the evacuations of 2003 and 2007, but there had been nothing like this since then. This time, the smoke seemed far off, separated from us by a mountain wilderness and a 150-acre lake.
When we got the alert at 2:30am, my husband sped the four blocks up to the park and saw the image that is now etched on the minds of our neighborhood residents: instead of a plume of smoke in the distance, the vast mountain on the side of the lake was now completely aflame, its ghastly glare reflecting on the waters below.
It was time to pack.
In those moments, where time is somehow simultaneously rushing by and yet eerily standing still, we must classify and categorize everything in our lives. What are the tier one valuables? We listed them off mechanically, robotically, like people in crisis do: passports, birth certificates, titles, irreplaceable papers, the 1885 family Bible, photo albums, the letters we wrote to each other in college before we were married.
Space would be limited. The battery on my classic roadster had unexpectedly died that morning, so that car would be left behind. We could only take what would fit in one trunk and backseat.
The evacuation warning had not yet transitioned to its final stage, the evacuation order, so we moved on to tier two items. What was next in the line of importance? A memento from a relative long passed away, computer hard drives, a favorite snare drum.
Those first moments in an emergency lay bare the deepest cares of the heart. A dear friend of mine lost her home in a fire years ago, and she had a few moments to retrieve what was most precious before the flames engulfed their house. Their son Isaac, then five years old, chose the dining table as his prized possession because of all the memories they had created sitting around it together as a family.
I remember watching the video footage of the Alabama flood years ago. Our pastor had gone to help as part of the rescue mission, and he came back stunned, changed, deeply impacted by the visuals he shared with us. All of the possessions people had worked for, the belongings they had traded time—the coin of their lives—for lay flooded in the streets. Thoughtful Christmas presents, jewelry, clothes, video games, things that once held memories and meaning, lay in a heap of rubble.
When our neighborhood alarm first sounded in the early morning hours, some of our neighbors evacuated immediately, but most of us stayed home and ready, cars packed, waiting for the evacuation warning to become an evacuation order. Thankfully, after three days on alert and with over 1100 firefighters battling the blaze, the warning was lifted. Though a total of 6500 acres were consumed, not a single person or house was lost.
Crises are windows to the soul. At the sound of the alarm, in the early morning stage between sleep and wakefulness, the ambient alertness created a sensation of being outside of one's own body and experience. We moved habitually, automatically. Belief drove behavior. And the hyper-vigilance combined with the re-classification of importance for every possession reminds me of yet another evacuation order.
“Behold, he is coming with the clouds,” Revelation 1:7 assures us, “and every eye will see him.” One day, Jesus will split the sky as he returns for his bride. With eyes like a flame of fire and feet like burnished bronze, he will stand in the heavens, and with a voice like the roar of many waters, he will call his beloved children home.
Whether your temporal timeline rests on pre-trib or post-trib doctrine, his people are commanded to be ready, alert. We will leave everything behind. And in that moment of his return, the decision will have already been made. The categorization of our life, what we hold dear, what we treasure, will have been laid bare in our beliefs and our behaviors.
Are you ready for that final evacuation order?
Maybe you find yourself in a wildfire zone right now. Maybe your life is chaotic, charred. Or maybe you look put together on the outside, but your heart is as dry and parched as the Otay Wilderness. Today is the day to make that decision, to re-categorize your life and put your treasure not in earthly things, but in things that do not fade, that do not rust, that no one can take away. Today is the day of salvation.
The evacuation order is imminent.
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