Oh, Lord Jesus It’s a FIRE!!!!!

Sweet Brown - Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That (Autotune Remix) - YouTube

[Reporter]
One resident describes her horrifying experience when she first realized the complex was on fire.
[Sweet Brown]
Well I woke up to get me a cold pop, and then I thought somebody was barbequing. I said “Oh Lord Jesus it’s a fire! Then I ran out, I didn’t grab no shoes or nothin’ Jesus. I ra-a-a-an for my life. And then the smoke got me, I got bronchitis. Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

You may not know Sweet Brown, but she is famous in my house. Whenever some drama occurs, one of my kids is likely to pipe up and say “Oh, Lord Jesus It’s a Fa-a-ahre!” The context for this, is a comic You-Tube video of an Oklahoma news clip that went viral a few years ago. A report about a fire got regurgitated as an auto tuner clip by someone who was a somewhat talented joker. 

The comedy was to be found in the character of Sweet Brown, a local resident who witnessed the fire. To fully appreciate this, you have to watch the clip. 

Sweet Brown’s colourful manner, made her temporarily famous with over three million YouTube hits, and the auto tuner remix was even featured on itunes, for download. Her son, interviewed said, “she’s just like that, that’s how she talks”. They were laughing, I suppose because of how she automatically brought Jesus into the conversation. She might just be the YouTube version of the book, “Conversations with God”. 

It’s not a new concept though. In the Bible, First Thessalonians 5:17, instructs us to “Pray without ceasing.” There are some who have tried to make this a practise, like Brother Lawrence, a Carmelite lay brother and a kitchen cook from the 1600’s who tried to pray without ceasing as part of his daily routine, and wrote a classic book about it.

Still, there are some for whom this is spontaneous and I kind of like that unvarnished approach a little better. A lot of people won’t get that. Others will. They are perhaps the ones who have been having one-on-one conversations with God or Jesus their entire lives. They have an internal dialogue going on all through the day, and other people don’t even realize it. I know, I was one of those kids who has also had conversations with God from early on, whether angry, in wonder, thankful, or just passing the time.

Going out of the old year, you have only to look at the news to see that all of creation is groaning as in childbirth. There are lots of problems we just don’t seem to have fixed yet. What can we do? Pray without ceasing might be good advice for the coming year, just as it was with the last year. Who knows? Conversations with Jesus just might be a thing you will come to enjoy. 

You could look for some words. They could be your own. Or you could just look out at the world, and exclaim like Sweet Brown, “Oh Lord Jesus, it’s a Fire”.  The only thing I can guarantee, is that it’s a conversation you won’t be having, alone.