Holy Smoke

There is an old (and I might add, bad) joke that my father used to tell. And if you knew my father, you would know that this was his kind of joke. The preacher receives a phone call from someone and you can only hear his end of the conversation.
"Hello."
"What?"
"You say the church building is on fire?!?!"
"Holy Smoke!"
See, I told you it was bad. But this did happen last week at our building. Our shepherds are very good at letting anyone use the building at little or no cost as a service to the community. Someone as they were coming in or leaving evidently flipped their cigarette into the bushes next to the door and it smoldered. Then it caught on fire. Yes, we did have one of the latest recorded incidences of a burning bush. Contrary to the Moses story, though, this bush was consumed and along with it, nearly the church building. I asked later if God spoke from it, but no one seemed to get the humor in the statement.
What would we have lost had the building burned down? Some books, some pictures, some computers, just stuff. I had a friend whose house burned to the ground. I asked him what he would have saved if he could have saved anything. His answer surprised me...he said he would have saved their wedding pictures. Memories that now exist only in their minds. Man, I could make a lot of applications from that!!
But I'll just stick to my favorite passage of Scripture from II Corinthians 4. "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all. Therefore, set your heart not what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary. What is unseen is eternal." What is unseen. The key to life. Have a great day. JW