Fireside Chat

The Academy student worships I have conducted throughout this year have had a single theme: holiness. You could say we took a spiritual journey through the Bible concept of holiness. And now, some additional thoughts on that topic.

Holiness is our destiny. Heaven is a holy place. All who are privileged to walk through those pearly gates into the Holy City, New Jerusalem, will be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord; therefore Paul encourages us to "pursue" it (Hebrews 12:14).

How is your pursuit of holiness going? Are you taking time to be holy, as the words of the hymn say? Are you spending time with the Holy Bible, that unique book inspired by the Holy Spirit? We all know that it is only through daily, Spirit-directed study of Scripture that anyone can be built into a holy temple for God. We know this, but what are we doing about it?

The unholy one, the Devil, has given holiness a bad reputation through legalism and extremism and all manner of lies. But we won't be led astray, if we seek holiness in the Biblical way. As we journey into holiness, we will lift it out of the low priority the Devil has given it, making it a worthy goal that any Christian can make their own.

I wish everyone a blessed summer break, and especially for our Seniors and Chad, who face a whole new life after high school. Our paths may part here in the journey, but only for a short while. I'm sure I speak for the whole faculty and staff when I pray that all of us will soon be part of that enormous reunion in that holy place, the Holy City, New Jerusalem.

I thought you'd appreciate hearing our big news from someone who witnessed it. Early this morning, (1:30 AM, Wednesday, June 3, 1998) a fire broke out in the Science Lab of Armona Union Academy. Since I live right across from the school, I was one of the first on the scene, however I did not call in the fire. I still don't know who did. But my wife Kim awoke to the sounds of the school's front gate being opened, asked me what anyone would possibly be doing at this hour at the school, and one look out the window towards the southern classroom complex answered the question: "The school's on fire" I said.

I threw on some clothes and ran out to find 2 or 3 county fire engines and one sheriff's patrol car already on the campus, and men scurrying everywhere to get to the back classrooms. I opened a side gate and ran out onto the western field, and saw flames shooting up 20 to 30 feet from the middle of the Science lab roof. At this point, I remembered watching the Armona Church burn from the same field about two years ago, and wishing I had had a camera then. So I ran back, grabbed a camera, and snapped about 12 shots of the blaze. It soon engulfed the chemical room, the Science classroom, and before it could be put out, the roof of the English room. My Bible classroom is the fourth room in this U-shaped complex, and thankfully it came through with nothing more than serious smoke damage.

An interesting early fact emerging from this morning's excitement is that one of the first firemen to approach the Science classroom noticed a computer mouse sitting on the grass outside the room. The school purchased a Pentium 200 MHZ computer for the Science room at the beginning of this school year, and lately it was kept in an inside corner of the Science classroom (the southeast corner). Although the roof has completely caved in, leaving piles of charred rubble all throughout the room, a fireman examined that corner this morning and found no evidence of the remains of a computer.

There are at least two brighter sides to this story: First, there was a high wind advisory for this evening, and it had indeed been blowing strong all night. All Spring I've noticed that on many windy days the wind would blow from the "wrong" direction, from the South (it ALWAYS blows from the North in Armona). Well, last night, thank God, it blew strongly from the North, away from the Administration/Chapel complex, which actually lies only 25 feet or so from the hottest part of the fire. Large dry evergreen trees are situated between the two buildings, and if the wind had blown from the South, I fear we would have lost the student lounge and the chapel, maybe much more. Secondly, this tragedy has come just three days from the end of a school year, which means most of our work is already wrapped up, or at least winding down. If this had happened a week or a month ago, it would have made a much bigger impact on this school year.

Those of you who have attended or worked at AUA will remember the famous adobe walls. Well, they're still standing strong. I went home after about three hours and tried to sleep; I think I only got about one hour's worth. I dug up my nicer camera and found two rolls of film and have taken about thirty additional pictures. Some of those I'll be able to post on AUA's web site, for those of you who care to see them.

And from what I can tell the courage of all the faculty and staff is high, even though everyone is still stunned over the whole thing. We've called off school for grades 9-12 today, but Pre-school through grade 8 goes on, since no other part of the campus was affected. One of the smaller two school buses was parked in the middle area of the U-shape formed by the classrooms, and the side facing the windows of the Science Lab is badly scorched, the windows and lights melted away. The classroom's little animals were all lost, too: fish, a turtle, a spider, and some rats. But otherwise, we plan to hold classes for the last two days of school, end the year on a sad but hopeful note, and spend our summer rebuilding.

Journey Into Holiness