THE BIRD HOUSE IS BURNING

I remember the day well. There were four of us who lived a carefree life in a little building in the garden of the Lexington Home where the King’s College had moved from its original home on the New Jersey coast. We had been fortunate to receive a new pot belly stove for our little home and we thought that was wonderful.
We had established a pattern in the days before of stoking the stove with coal and opening the draft and heading out to breakfast and our classes. I had settled in to a very boring psychology class and was somewhat drifting off into another land beyond the classroom when a person broke into the building and loudly announced, “The Bird House is burning.” This was our home that was going up in flames.
We all rushed out of class just to get to the burning building in time to grab one desk from the doorway and then watch the rest of the building disappear in flames. As a sophomore in college, I did not have a great amount of worldly goods, but it was all that I had. I had cleaned out my room at home and brought it all with me to college.
I had not dressed well for the morning. I was wearing a pair of pants that had a hole in the back. My feet were clad with a poor excuse for a pair of sandals. My shirt left a great deal to be desired. One of my roommates was having his picture taken that morning so he had on his best suit, a great shirt and tie and his finest pair of shoes. I guess I should not complain. I could have cut class and slept in that morning and then what would have happened?
That new stove was the culprit. Perhaps I should say that the way we stoked it was the culprit because it was different from the old stove we had and made such a great flame that as it traveled up the flue, the heat ignited a fire in the ceiling and that was it for the Bird House. We called it the Bird House, but we really should have called it the Byrd House because it was named for the gardener, Mr. Byrd, who had kept that lovely garden at Lexington.
It was Friday when the fire took place. I headed back to my home in New Jersey for the weekend, and even wondered whether I should finish out the school year. I was not home very long when my pastor called and asked me to come and see him. Pastor Leach was a man who just impressed you as being godly. He was the pastor of our church for 35 years. Not many people can weather a 25 year tenure as pastor of a thriving church.
When I arrived at the church we sat down together and almost his first words were, “Don, I suppose you are wondering why this happened to you.” As I reflect on those words, I should say that they were a pretty obvious observation, but his next statement was not. I remember his words to this day. He said, “Don, you are expecting to serve the Lord in the days to come and you are training for that service. How are you going to show people how to trust the Lord in bad circumstances if you have never had to trust him in a difficult time.” Wow! I had not thought of the fire and the loss of all of my goods in any other way than a persecution. I had not thought of it as a time of testing and training.
It is a good thing to learn that when someone comes into our lives and shouts, “The Bird House is burning,” there is a lesson to be learned. We need to ask God, “What should I learn from this experience and how can I better serve you because of it.”