The Burn

I considered this morning how God uses people in the lives of others.  There are the moments that are the sharing of fruit of their lives that has developed as a tasty and nourishing offering.  We love that joyous, party-like stuff.  But there is also the kind that comes from hardships suffered and choosing to share life anyway. 

Trees that started and grew and offered shade for a long time are sometimes felled and cut to pieces.  Sometimes it chooses to sit there.  And in those seasons, is vulnerable to staying isolated in the woods, disintegrating little by little as the seasons pass.

But when someone is willing to roll onward, offering what may seem like small parts of themselves still, because they believe in His goodness and ability to restore and be true to what He says, then they can help kindle and increase the fire in the belief of another who never had known that that kind of passion existed.  Only vulnerable and honest sharing of that kind produces a glimpse of strength and the blazing heat that we discover later kept us alive during the coldest nights of our lives.