When I smell smoke, my mind does not only stay in the present moment. It reaches back to a night from my childhood. That memory holds ash, fear, kindness, and a glass jar full of silver dollars that I never saw again. That jar still speaks to me, even though it disappeared a long time ago.

I was about six years old when my parents took my brothers and me on a short vacation to the beach. For a kid from a small town in Texas, a four hour trip felt like a great adventure. We played in the waves and laughed in the sun. I am pretty sure my parents wanted a little rest more than they wanted sand in their shoes, because they took us to see the movie Jaws. After that, none of us had much interest in the ocean.

The second night of that trip, the hotel phone rang. This was before cell phones. A call to a hotel room in the middle of a family vacation did not carry light news. I remember my mother’s face changing as she listened. The mood in the room shifted. We began to pack in a hurry. On the drive home I did not fully understand what had happened. I only knew something important had gone very wrong.

When we pulled up to our property, I saw the truth. Our house had burned to the ground. There was nothing left but blackened debris. The only thing still standing was the refrigerator, a pale shape in the middle of ruin. That picture burned itself into my young mind.

We moved in with my granny across the field. Everything we owned was gone except the few things we had taken on the trip. The town rallied around us. People from church brought clothes, blankets, and toys. Friends and relatives returned old photographs that my parents had mailed out over the years. We began to rebuild a life and even rebuilt a house on the same land. I learned early that God can move through the hands of ordinary people when disaster strips you down to nothing.

Somewhere in that pile of ruins lay a gallon sized glass jar filled with silver dollars. My parents had collected those coins over time. As a boy I would look at that jar and imagine what I might buy one day. It felt solid and permanent. In my imagination I saw myself digging through the ashes with a metal detector. I pictured the coins shining in the dirt like buried treasure. I waited for someone to say they had found them during cleanup. No one ever did. The jar and the money vanished from my life without a trace.

That missing jar became a quiet teacher. It reminded me that things I consider secure can disappear in a single night. Savings, collections, trophies, keepsakes, plans, and even buildings can go up in smoke. As I grew older, I stopped expecting those coins to return. I began to ask what I truly had that fire could not touch. Love from my family survived. Faith in God survived. The kindness of a community stayed with me. Those treasures settled deeper than the silver ever did.

Years later, as an adult, I found myself in another building with fire crawling through the walls. The smell of burning wires in the back room at Eagles Bend brought that childhood scene roaring back. While Chris and I tried to move customers toward the exits, my mind was running two tracks. One track watched the present emergency. The other replayed a refrigerator standing by itself and a jar of coins that never came home.

When I wrote about that memory in the book, I did not include it as a random sad story. I wanted readers to sit with the question that has stayed with me. What are your silver dollars. Where do you place your sense of security. What would remain if fire touched the edges of your life. For some people the answer is money in the bank. For others it is a job title, a reputation, or a certain way of living. These things are not evil on their own. They simply do not last forever.

The jar still speaks because I never held those coins again. The loss stays open and unresolved. In that empty space, I hear a steady message from God. Hold earthly things with a light grip. Invest in what cannot burn. Store treasure in the lives you touch, in the time you spend with Him, and in the quiet obedience that no one else applauds.

I will probably never know what happened to those silver dollars. Maybe someone found them and kept them. Maybe the heat changed them beyond recognition. Either way, their lesson keeps working in me. When I start to chase comfort more than calling, I remember that jar. When I feel fear about the future, I remember how God carried my family through that season with help from neighbors and friends.

A jar of lost silver dollars may sound like a small detail from a long ago fire. For me it has become a signpost. It points away from things that fade and toward a kingdom that stands when everything else falls. That is why it still speaks, and that is why I shared it in these pages.