Come Like the Wind (revisited)

I posted this song a few weeks ago, because it hit me hard then. As I process through the horror that my friends in Chico and Paradise have watched and experienced in the last week, this song has struck me differently, and I wanted to try to sum that up.

 In this song we ask God to "Come like the wind, come like a fire, burn in our hearts, our one desire, we want to you know you God, we want to know you God."

 And I think I realized this week how DESTRUCTIVE fire can be. I think when I first sing this song, I thought "yaay, God - come burn a passion in me" but really, that also means "burn up all the ugliness that is inside of me"... burn to the GROUND my desires, my sin, anything that isn't God. That all that is left is wanting to know and be known by God. Fire fueled by wind leaves nothing behind. It tears through and leaves a trail of ashes, a vacancy.

 And I wonder - maybe that's the point. That God can burn everything up that we might be completely dependent on Him. Knowing Him. Being known by Him. And that while we still have all our "stuff" - our coping mechanisms, our sins, our desires... we're less dependent on Him.

So these words have new meaning to me today... new images of what they could look like are seared into my brain by the pictures I have seen of ashes where homes used to be. Prayers that God would bring beauty from the ashes, that we would depend on Him, that we would know and be known by Him.

Come Lord. Come.