This is adapted from a parable I developed some years ago for a sermon to the Spanish-speaking church I co-pastored in Duvall, Washington:
There once was a terrible fire that burned through a family’s home, and as flames shot high into the night and smoke poured from the shattered windows, the mother, father, and their small children were frantically watching the destruction and waiting for someone, anyone, to help. Their cries rang through the neighborhood, occasionally drowned by the roar of the inferno behind them.
A woman drove by and was startled to see the blaze, and she knew it was a bad one. The house was clearly in danger; the family obviously distraught. But after praying about it, she didn’t feel personally led to try to help, and in fact had a real check in her heart about getting involved. Yet she rejoiced that her personal Lord and Savior Jesus Christ would send others — she believed they were called “men” — to put out the flames and minister to the family. God just would not let the family lose everything! Still, it was important to operate in one’s calling, kind following kind and people remaining in the roles the Lord had assigned to them at creation. After all, she reflected, the Apostle Paul warns us that in the Body, not everyone can be an ear, or a hand, or a knee; some people had some gifts, and others were gifted in other ways. The Spirit distributes His gifts as He wills, and her particular gifts certainly kept her DayTimer full. She knew what she was called to do, and that night, she was called to continue on her way to the Ladies Holiday Craft Fair. Her heart was comforted by the glorious truth that everyone had their own part to play in the sovereign will of God, and she knew the Lord would send someone to help. So she drove off, marveling out how God used each of His children in different ways to accomplish His divine purposes.
A second truck came upon the scene, and the driver immediately jumped out. He could see that it was, indeed, an emergency, and, unlike the first passerby, he knew he had a part to play. He was ready, was always ready; the world was awash in sin and evil, and he wouldn’t slink away from confronting it. Fire was bad — he knew that, he’d seen its destruction before — and it was clear that the family’s home was being consumed. Fires don’t just erupt, he reasoned, and as he took in the shabbiness and disrepair of the surrounding houses, it appeared more than likely to him that some sort of carelessness, some kind of irresponsibility, was responsible for the inferno. He knew what was right; they clearly didn’t. So he jumped out of his truck, went over to the heartsick couple and their sobbing children, and ripped into them for being victims of something so evil, so hideous, as a household inferno. He berated the father. He lectured the mother. He yelled at the children, hoping they, at least, would be properly chastened by his anger and maybe learn something. This sort of thing happened all too often, that he knew; he wasn’t about to fall behind on his duty to confront the evil around him, and after a good, long scolding, he drove away, certain that these folks were now well aware of how dangerous fire was. He had taken a stand, by God, not like some of the feminized, sentimental syncretists in his congregation.
A third truck pulled up to the scene, driven by a woman in a beautiful, expensive coat and fabulous suede boots. Yes, they were extravagant, and she was often more than a little frustrated by the sheer impracticality of high-heeled boots. And her coat! It was perhaps a little too nice, she occasionally thought, embarrassed by its cost and well aware that it was nicer — and quite a bit so — than the coats of most of the folks in her fellowship. She had just gotten it back from the dry cleaners (she had “redeemed” it, she thought, remembering Pastor Will’s recent sermon on “redemption”), and she was a good steward of the good things her Lord had gifted her with, never careless or impulsive. Outside, the fire was blazing. The thick, belching smoke that hung over the scene would ruin, absolutely RUIN, her parka, and the soot and ash dusting the ground would singe and stain her mahogany suede boots. A shudder of guilt ran through her; after all, these people (she didn’t know if they were Christians or not) were losing their home, and she was maybe just a tad bit convicted of her concern for her coat and her boots. Still, she thought, it’s not just the clothing — if she went up to offer help, the smell of smoke would cling to her long after she kicked off her boots and slid out of her coat, and people who didn’t know her would wonder why she smelled that way. Maybe, she thought with a start, they’d think she smoked! That would be bad for witnessing. And she didn’t know what kind of people they were, really. There could be swearing, she thought; pagans used language that just made her sick, and yet, under the right circumstances, she understood how some people could resort to that sort of thing. It was because they were around others who were lost and going to hell; sin begets sin, and you had to be careful who you allowed yourself to be exposed to. Satan prowls around like a lion, looking to devour the saints, she remembered, and a smoke-saturated parka would be, in more ways than one, a stench that lingered. Best not to risk it, she concluded, brushing the lint off the velvety lapel of the “Princess Parka” her Daddy, the King, had brought her. And she pulled away, grateful that her clothes and her truck still smelled fresh and clean.
Finally, a fourth truck arrived on the scene. Immediately, a man jumped out, ran to the back, unwound a thick, worn-looking hose, attached it to the pumper tank, and began to spray the house with a surge of water, training the tremendous force toward the roof, spraying the walls and windows with a flood of fire-drenching hope, and scouring the stagnant, foul air with the refreshing, powerful flow he controlled in his hands. The flames began to die down, and he soon turned his attention to the family. He wrapped the children in blankets, poured cold water for the father and mother, called for help, and comforted them. He had good news — the house, he said, wasn’t completely ruined; he was a man who knew about fire and water, destruction and debris, and with the authority of one who knows and the warmth of one who cares, he repeated to the exhausted and bewildered couple that the fire was conquered, succumbing to the one thing it could not devour.
The couple had needed water to stanch the onslaught of flames threatening to take everything they had ever had, everything they had worked for and put their hope in. The man brought water, because he had some. He was a firefighter, equipped with water, pumps, and hoses and trained in how best to use them. It was what he was in this world for; it was only his job, but it was never just a job. Still, he felt grieved. Because the other three people in the other three trucks — the woman too busy to stop, the man who hated fire and those who were involved in it, and the woman afraid of the stench of smoke — were firefighters as well.
They drove right by a burning house and the terrified family who owned it, equipped with tanks brimming with the one single thing that would put it all right. And they didn’t stop, each certain that while possessing themselves everything the family needed and being fully able to deliver it, they had nonetheless gotten it right. In their worlds, that was of much greater value, and certainly less risky, than being righteous. They had chapter, verse, sermon notes and study Bibles, after all; the fourth man only had water . . .
(Copyright 1997, Keely Emerine-Mix. All rights reserved).