Wind and Rain

This past weekend my bride headed to Lubbock for a wedding shower, leaving me to my own devices here at the Patch. For months I have been stripping the limbs from the juniper and cedar logs (saving the logs) and building several burn piles. These burn piles burn fast and hot. So I have to wait until everything is soaked from rain and a calm day before I set one ablaze. The lesson here is that levelheaded wives should not leave their husbands at home all weekend with a lighter, a can of kerosene, and a burn pile. The temptation is simply too great.

The pile will burn down to just the stumps in about 9 minutes. Nothing survives within a 40' radius for those first 9 minutes. The BTU's from cedar is off the charts. But after the 9 minutes it down to just the stumps and the root balls of dirt they are attached to. These normally will smolder for days.

But Saturday, at almost dusk another small thunderstorm blew through. If you know anything about Texas summer thunderstorms they are rush in with a high wind, blow horizontal rain for about 30 minutes, light up the sky with numerous lightening strikes which also cause almost a continual roll of thunder. One lightening strike was so bright, with the instant boom that I felt the compression in my chest and wondered if it had hit somewhere in the Patch and I just didn't see it.

Here is what I noticed. As I watched, the stumps that I thought had burned down began to glow a fierce and bright hot red. The wind continued to whip across those burning stumps and even fanned alive flames that had been dormant for most of the day. My incredulity grew as I realized that the rain was having no effect at all on the renewed flames! The wind was creating the fuel needed to burn brighter and brighter in the face of the rain that should have been destroying the fire once and for all. I had never seen this before. Rain always triumphs over the fire, or so I thought. But this fire had the ally of the wind, even though the rain rode on the shoulders of the wind, it could not extinguish the fire.

So my mind began to reorganize the events of the fire and of my life. The flame sometimes lies dormant waiting on the wind to refuel the fire. But the wind also brings rain. I realized that what I expect when the wind freshens and I experience some renewal of the fire within, that the rain will stay away. Not so. I think the rain comes, but is ineffective because the wind carries the very thing needed to renew. And while the wind may cause the stumps to be consumed faster, it seemed like a good trade. To have the fire hot and fresh rather than smoldering and hidden. The stumps were still hot to the touch 2 days later.

There are several analogies to found here and I will let you find your own. It still amazes me when the Creator chooses to show me something from His own hand. He has decided there is still fire here that needs to be bright and hot, at least for a time.

Godspeed to those out there looking to rekindle a smoldering spark. The wind will come, it will bring some rain, but the renewal will be a life, a fire of significance.

Don