The Fire and the Rain

“Everyone out of the house!” Daddy shouted.

Sierra’s heart jumped. What was happening?

It was a hot summer Friday afternoon. Thunder rumbled in the distance. In the kitchen, things were busy. “Blueberry muffins!” Sierra grinned as she gently stirred the batter. Her sister Lea was nearby, pressing a piecrust into a pan for Sabbath lunch the next day while their teen friend Hannah scrubbed and poked the potatoes to get them ready to bake.

Sierra was almost ready to add the blueberries when they heard a loud thunderclap and saw lightning streak across the sky outside the windows. Daddy had said there would be thunder today, so that was nothing to worry about. Besides, they liked thunder.

But suddenly—
Boom!

What was that very loud bang? An explosion? A gunshot?

They froze and looked at each other. This was usually a quiet, safe place out in the country. Nothing like that ever happened here. Before anyone could say another word, the lights flickered—and went out.

Daddy came running out of his study. “That sounded like an explosion—there’s probably a fire!”

He rushed outside, saw flames about 100 feet away, then burst right back in. “Everyone out of the house! There’s a fire! Get in the cars!” he shouted as he grabbed the phone to dial emergency services.

Sierra ran to her room and grabbed her big stuffed puppy, her journal, and her pencil case. Then she remembered her parakeet, Azure. If the fire came into the house, she didn’t want him to get hurt. But he wasn’t there! Someone must have taken him.

She ran out the front door and bumped into Lea, who was carrying an armful of stuffed animals. Whew! Hannah had Azure! As Sierra ran, she remembered what Daddy said: “Get in the cars.” Thinking that the fire might be in the roof above the garage and that it could collapse, she jumped into the car. Hannah handed Azure to her. Lea tumbled in beside her on the back seat. Mommy quickly drove them away from the house to a safer spot. They paused there to see what would happen. “God, please save our house,” they prayed again and again.

Before anyone could say another word, the lights flickered—and went out.

But then Mommy stopped. I must do something to help, she thought.

Running back to the house, she grabbed a hose and started wetting the dry grass, trying to keep the fire away from the house. The fire crackled and snapped in the dry grass, creeping closer.

A white truck pulled up, and neighbors started arriving to help fight the fire. One of them even had firefighter gear with him, which he quickly put on. He had been training to be a firefighter!

Yay! They will help us! the girls thought.

Three neighbors had arrived by now, but still no fire truck. Lightning struck nearby, and someone shouted, “There’s another fire!” It was on the next property over; then they saw another one had started farther down near a different neighbor’s house.

Sierra and Lea waited and watched.

Then—sirens!

A fire truck roared up.

“The firefighters!” Sierra said. “They’re here!”

Still, it wasn’t over yet.

Thinking this was too important a moment for the girls to miss, Mommy left Daddy, who was helping to fight the fire, and came to get the girls. “Come on and watch the firefighters put the fire out,” she said. The firefighters dug around the flames and sprayed water from their big hoses. But they didn’t stay long. “We need to help the others,” one explained as they left. “There are fires all along the power line. Dry lightning started them.”

The fire was still burning on one side of the small orchard, so Sierra ran for a shovel. Now that it was a little safer, she and Lea filled trash cans and old paint buckets with water to help the adults fight what was left of the fire. But Sierra’s heart was still racing. As she filled a bucket with the slow-running hose, she turned and saw a giant pine tree burst into flames in the neighbor’s yard. They weren’t out of the danger zone yet, and she started crying. She heard Mommy praying aloud just a few feet away: “Please help us, God. Please save our house! Please send rain!”

Then something amazing happened.

The wind shifted—away from the house—and it started to sprinkle.

Plop . . . plop . . . plop . . .

Big raindrops began to fall.

“Oh, God, thank You—thank You for the rain!” Mommy said, tears in her eyes.

The rain kept dampening the dry ground, and they kept working to put out the last flames.

The wind shifted—away from the house—and it started to sprinkle.

In the meantime, other fires were still spreading. A loud plane roared overhead. As everyone paused to watch, it dropped bright-pink fire retardant in the neighbor’s yard. And then Daddy pointed up: “Look at the helicopter!” he shouted as it joined the fight, lowering a big bucket on a long rope and dumping water on the flames on the neighbor’s property.

“There’s a big bulldozer on the neighbor’s property!” someone called.

A tree burst into flames just when the machine needed to get by to make the firebreak. No problem! He just ran over the tree. Sierra and Lea laughed out loud.

Sierra’s back felt sore from hauling water up and down the hill so many times.

But the fire was under control!

Their house was safe.

Hannah, Daddy, and Lea had been wearing flip-flops the whole time, and their feet were black. Sierra had her best jeans on, and her tennis shoes were no longer white. All their clothes smelled like smoke.

Eventually everything calmed down. They stood with arms around each other as they watched the sun set and opened the Sabbath together. They were all thankful for the same thing—God saved their house! God’s promise had come true: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me” (Ps. 50:15).

Sierra asked, “Do you think the muffins will turn out after sitting all this time?”

“We’ll find out,” Mommy said.

Sierra gently stirred the blueberries into the batter, being careful not to squish them.

It was past bedtime when they finally sat down to eat supper.

“Not too bad,” Mommy smiled as she took a big bite of a warm blueberry muffin.

Although she was feeling dead tired, Sierra wrote in her journal that night as she heard chainsaws clearing away brush in the distance.

“The chainsaw crew is working hard to keep me awake,” she wrote. “Whew—I’ll sleep like a brick tonight!”