The prairie is burning. The thick smell of grass fire hangs heavy in the air. It is difficult to tell if the morning mist comes from smoke, clouds, or both. I drove past a burn just yesterday, the dividing line stark, the advancing orange sliver leaving a blackened blanket behind. It sweeps through, indiscriminately clearing the chaff, the undergrowth, the invasive plants. Yet after, the land is not barren. The charred ashes feed the ground, the clearing of plants enables new growth, and afterward the waving grasses and flowers of prairie and brush blossom. The fire is hot and hard and even the ash’s heat can scorch long after the blaze, yet despite its demise, the prairie’s beauty is reborn.
Perhaps the fires in our own lives serve the same purposes. We plod through our crucibles, our selfishness and sin burned from us, and we are left feeling leveled, flattened, colorless. But God himself walks in the fire with us. He is close at hand through the painful burning away of our impurities. And he grants us something infinitely more precious than a blooming pasture.
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ ~ 1 Peter 1:6-7
May our faith lead us home to Him.
Photo by Andy Watkins on Unsplash
Wattsup With Kids 