Burn Baby Burn!!

Texas is not alone in the drought.  Farmers all around the country are filing farmer insurance claims to cover the loss of their crops.  Burn bans are in effect and cigarette butts are burning down forests and communities.  Fire does not discriminate nor does it destroy kindly.

Close your eyes and imagine being on the top of a summit.  The air is thin and your body is tired, so tired.  A storm blows in continuing to beat your already exhausted body and your supplies are lost.  The hopes of a helicopter are grim with the storm pounding the summit.  Your eyes close as you see images of your family and memories of all the good and bad times in your life.  You can't feel your fingers or your toes and you aren't even sure if you have a nose anymore.  You start to drift off to sleep.  Cold and  sleep wash over you.  The end.

Fire is not so kind.  It is excrutiating torture to be burned.  Fire never feels good.  I cook daily and am a "master chef" which means screams are often heard coming from the kitchen.  I tell myself that burns are a sign of a good cook.  The other day I place the plates in the oven to broil the food and give it that delicious broil-ness finish.  I pull them out of the oven with a mitt.  Moments later I grab the plates to place on the table...without a mitt or towel or ANYTHING!  Duh!  I scream my head off.  Chloe bounces in the room and says, "Yup, Mom is cooking."  Brett is a little more kind, "Mom, can I help you?  Are you ok?"  I'm fine.  The days I burn my fingers are good days to commit a crime as I'm fairly certain I burn off my fingerprint for 24 hours.

The other side of fire is actually quite beautiful.   Prescribed Wildfires  are a large part of creating ecological balance in the wild.  When fire takes everything down to the dirt, new fresh life springs up again.  Native plants find their way back to their homes and wildlife returns to breathe life in to the once scorched land.  I like to think of fire as a fresh beginning.  A new opportunity to take the things in my life that keep me from being all God created me to be.  Perhaps I bear fruit, but if the fruit I bear is sour and shriveled I need to burn that out of my life.

Yesterday I wrote about the hidden cacti in our lives and today I offer a way to get rid of said cacti.    I offer my simple advice....Burn Baby Burn!!
[ESV]

Matthew

3:10 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”