Desert Fire

As I came out of my hip-hop class at the gym, my naïve self went from happily dancing to Usher's "Caught Up" to staring in awe at a massively wide fire brimming across the mountains surrounding Loma Linda. I was suddenly reminded of the volcano Kat, Ryan, Mike, Jonathan, Jennifer, and I had jubilantly yelped over last March in Costa Rica. Except for these fires are caused, from what I've been told, by arson, the famous Santa Ana winds, and a lack of water.

All the signs this weekend foretold of the approaching flames. Sunday I slow-motion biked against an incredible headwind to the academy's fall festival. I felt like a rebellious Botticelli's Venus trying to resist the cloud blowing her to shore, except, of course, I was fully clothed, do not have massively long blond hair, and was not shell surfing in a sea of water, but biking on sea of concrete.

Then today we learned about the fires that were swept around thanks to that wind. Exiting outside after neuroanatomy class, my eyes started watering, not just from the smoke, but the monochromic sky. The lack of any shades of color or even gray was something I have never experienced. And, of course, no one could ever guess, if they didn't already know, that the white sheet hid large mountains amongst it. Finally tonight the mountains came out again, but only because the flames illuminated them.

Everyday I have to restrain myself from becoming irritated living with this kind of "nature." I'm happy to see the palm trees, smell the white roses outside my door, and run past the occasional orange grove. Yet I become annoyed because I realize that all of this greenery comes at the cost of draining the lakes and every other water source in California and surrounding states. I remember a friend saying, in reference to Southern California, that people are not supposed to live in the desert…at least in this kind of quantity. But people do it anyways. And, oddly enough, more and more houses and strip malls pop up like mushrooms. Thirsty, poisonous, mushrooms.

I've been thinking a lot about deserts lately. I've been trying to not have all of these negative thoughts about the one in which I currently live. I'm looking at my time here as my Moses experience. (And, wouldn't you know it, I've got my own pillar of fire.) I'm trying to appreciate the desert for the parts that seem natural: the rattlesnakes, coyotes, cactus, and even the hares that leap in front of me while I'm jogging. And, I love the people here and even a hip-hop class or two. But, this is not my Promised Land.

I think the same can be said about our voyage through the desert of life in this sinful planet. Things definitely get old, people complain, we get thirsty. But God shows us, just as he showed the Israelites over and over again (even though we continually show our stupidity), that He is sustaining us. Manna falls from heaven, water pours out of rocks, and, if we don't let the heat and sand get to us, we can have great relationships with our fellow travelers. And I'm so thankful we have something so much more abundantly amazing coming soon—not just in reference to nature, but to every aspect of our lives. And that is something we won't have to steal from another state