Scorched and Skillful

Scorched and Skillful

(“God was kind to us and had them send a skillful man named Sherebiah.” Ezra 8:18a)

The prairie was a wide putting green unwatered through the winter,
and crumbled bumps plowed weeds and wheat encircled the lot where
a few dozen hoped to raise a simple box of a building; gray and white
on the outside;
earth-tones within: forest green carpet with lines and leaves and branches
barely visible in the background underfoot,
adobe pink walls that dimmed to sandstone under the soft light,
white cathedral ceiling training the eye upward hoping for the
nonverbal
“ah”

Of comfort and reverence.

Ten years previous a parsonage sat on the same prairie
75 miles southeast. In an oasis of evergreens, and one night unoccupied,
current does what current does, taking the path of least resistance across
two wires with frayed insulation. Scorched, angry embers
blew from room to room, up bearing walls to ceiling tiles, only
to fall, a flat pancake of coal, square upon our 2 year old angel’s crib.

Non were hurt, nearly all was lost, and we had little to rebuild
lives we thought had dived into a crater lake of the unknown.

The prairie is a fair example; latest fall when brown lies upon brown,
gray dirt blows into gray dust bowls sometimes taking the tops of
storage sheds or mobile homes. That’s why they tie salvaged truck tires
to weight the light houses down.

Scorched, so the hairs on our arms curled up and singed,
eyebrows indiscernible, skin red, then purples as days progressed.

Scorched, so the memory turned a determined talent
into trade. Maybe the scars on the arms, the ache on the legs
are all the interpretation of Scripture one man needed to
point a living way over the piles of embers to the pains
of those who remember much the same. We remain
scarred, but, stepping out of the rubble into the next
man’s trouble
we are healing while…
we remain scarred.