There are plenty of contentious issues in organized religion, and the idea of divine intervention has to be right up there. Why would a deity intervene in one case and not another? It's all part of the plan, or so we're told.
Still, many people are seeing signs of some goodness that might have come out of a nasty church fire, and there's nothing wrong with finding the good in the bad.
A massive fire had consumed the church in flames in the middle of the night, reducing it to a shell of its former self and effectively evicting the congregation.
However, when the sun rose the next day, the building had a surprise in store.
"Picture this, a building so hot that at one point in time, firefighters had to back out," read a post on the Coal City Fire Department's Facebook page. "In your mind, everything should be burned, ashes."
The fire department said that "not a single cross was harmed!" And, thankfully, they were able to add that "Not a single firefighter was hurt!"
"Prayers for the pastor and the congregation today," they concluded.
Just two days after making the post, it had received more than 34,000 reactions and 37,000 shares.
And many, many people had similar stories to share. "Our house burned nothing left but my dads bible. He had passed years before," wrote one person. "The cover was gone but not one word was burned. Gods word prevails."
"We were walking in the woods yelling for survivors, and looking for the wreckage, when we got on scene. We found wallets and papers, blowing in the wind, that were charred and burnt. Un readable. We did however, find a Bible. Untouched. Completely readable," she wrote. "I don’t talk much about responding that day, but felt compelled to share my story too."
"Books usually don’t burn unless parted. The compression of the paper leave no room for air to feed the fire. Smoke damage and light burning on outside is normal," wrote one person.
Another person backed that up, saying "unless its moved and manipulated (poked at with a stick or something to open pages up) the fire will not burn the inner pages bc there is no oxygen flowing thru...Have a bonfire toss some old books and dont mess with them. The outside may burn a bit, the edges but the inside of the pages will be completely fine."
"We will have to rebuild but we will be ok," read their Facebook post. "We will fight the enemy and not let him hold us down."
