I looked out of the manse window and there was old Dick limping down the chapel path faster than I thought possible. His face was pale and shrivelled with fear. He had only one aim: to get home as fast as his gammy leg would carry him. Dick's response to danger was always the same: first panic and then flight.

Dick had spent a quiet morning raking up the grass in the chapel graveyard that he had scythed the previous week. It was a skill he had learned in the cornfields of his youth. The grass was very dry because we were in the middle of a fine warm spell of weather. Before sitting down for a bite to eat Dick set fire to several heaps of dry grass. Unfortunately one of those heaps was dangerously close to one of the large, dusty, conical yew trees that graced our graveyard.

The yew seemed to ignite all at once. It exploded into flame. One moment Dick was dozing peacefully the next he was wide eyed with terror, scrabbling for his jacket, clutching at his stick and fleeing from the scene of his crime.

My father yelled, "Come on." We rushed outside to the large freshwater tank attached to our house. It dated back to the time we were without mains water. We plunged our buckets into the tank and ran for the holocaust.

Meanwhile there was consternation in the two clay lump cottages adjacent to the Chapel graveyard. Didi, Alice and their two sons lived in one and an elderly spinster, Miss Ward, in the other. Didi was not a good man in a crisis. He was notorious for his assistance at another fire in the village many years earlier. A farmhouse went up in smoke. Didi's attempts to rescue the contents from the blaze consisted of throwing items of crockery through the kitchen window! Now he was beside himself, "Mummy, mummy," he shouted, "We're on fire." His wife who was made of sterner stuff told him to go and get Miss Ward out of her house. Off stomped Didi to hammer on Miss Ward's door. "Miss Ward," he yelled, "Miss Ward - pack your bloody bags - we're on fire." Now there is no evidence that Miss Ward ever packed her bags or even left her cottage.

Meanwhile the village blacksmith, Ernie, a deacon of the chapel had phoned up the Wickhambrook fire brigade. Jack and Bill were part-time firemen for the Wichambrook brigade and also deacons of the chapel. When they received the news that there was a fire at Brockley Baptist Church they assumed their chapel was on fire. Both were cautious men and Jack usually drove the fire engine on the principle of, 'more haste less speed.' On this occasion he abandoned the habit of a lifetime and drove like Jehu. As a consequence the brigade reached the scene of the inferno in a state of shock and spent twenty minutes searching for the fire hydrant.

Well what of the fire! The pastor and his three sons had thrown several buckets of water into the blaze when miraculously it began to die down. The pastor always liked to think that his prompt action had put the fire out. When it was well and truly out Didi and his two boys, Jerky and Arka, arrived to pour pail after pail of water on to the ashes. They too claimed with pride to have put the fire out. Not to be outdone the Wickhambrook fire brigade did at length pour thousands of gallons on the sodden ashes of the once proud yew. Jack and Bill never forgot the time they save their chapel from the flames.

The truth of the matter is that the fire put paid to it self. The tinder dry, dusty, yew burned with such ferocity that it burned it self out in minutes without setting fire to anything else.

And what of old Dick? He wasn't seen for a month!

There are two morals to this story. Firstly the Christian should not panic when trouble comes. It is cowardly to run away from a problem of our own making. We should face up to problems and tackle them in faith. Secondly the fiercer the blaze the shorter it lasts. I think this is true both of temptation and persecution. God sees to it that raging, destructive, persecution soon burns itself out. We do well to remember the words of the writer to the Hebrews: We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. Heb3v14. Let nothing shake your confidence in him.