Where Love Grows

 It's been two years since the fire torched everything in sight and laid bare over 200,000 acres of Alaska wilderness, blanketing much of the state in a smoky haze as skies turned orange and disguised all signs of mountain majesty. We could all feel the heat...and haven't we all felt the heat before of a life going up in flames? 

There has never been one who didn't suffocate at some point under the pressing of a fiery trial, watching all they've held dear wiped out by things out of their control. Feeling powerless to stop the overwhelming winds of change and the dark skies that hide His face, wondering if Grace still cared. 

I remember praying for clean air to breathe, smoke hitting the nostrils immediately upon stepping outdoors. One could barely breathe. My soul has felt the same, too. 

And I recall how much we cried out for cleansing rain. For healing-water that would douse the flames and clear the skies and restore what had been destroyed. But the rains didn't come for sometime. 

Sometimes character and hope is tested in the waiting for what you've asked... 

And nobody asks to go through life-fires and nobody wants to watch an inferno threaten everything you think you know or hoped for and nobody thinks that all you've labored toward could come to an end so quickly - dash all your dreams in an instant. And as the fire passes through and you doubt if anything of value will be left, you question if you'll ever seen anything good come from what has happened. 

Yet... 

They say the ground once covered in fire-glow now is blanketed by fireweed - pink grandeur silhouetted against the remnants of torched trees and black earth, causing it's color to stand out all the more. 

Love always grows in the hard places and never did Love show up more than when Love Himself stretched out on a dead tree, only to rise again three days later. 

Love is more than just heart-affection for the good times. Love suffers with. 

And if you want to know if someone truly loves, watch how they hurt alongside. Watch how they show up when things get hard. 

Because that's what He did. 

It's proven that ash is one of the greatest fertilizers and, doesn't it stand to reason that the fires of our lives can also seed the greatest restoration? 

Nature-cycles always prove His way of doing things and no journey is ever a throw-away when He has guided every step along the way. 

When faced with hardships you feel are inescapable...when pain feels like it's continually writing its way through every line of your story...when you keep watching that wall of destruction burn its way right into you again and again... 

Go to the scene of your past fires and ask yourself what came after. Look for the new life that emerged from what was and think if certain things aren't more beautiful now than they were, simply because they're now splashing renewal across the broken, empty spaces - fertilized by the charred remains of the past. 

Sometimes they let fires burn because it clears the old out to make way for the new and just maybe God Himself lets the flames make their way right through us in order to torch away what doesn't belong so what's left will be better than before. 

Only with time can you tell what gifts your soul-fires left you. But, once you discover them, it points the heart upward and reminds it that, on the other side of the smoke and the heat and the flames, lies redemption. On the other side of the burning, lies God. On the other side of the devastation, lies Love...

Love that can only grow when it has suffered.