Well, I think I know how they make crop circles because I have the makings of one in my corn ‘field’.

The other afternoon (Sunday, to be exact), I was watering and muttering about the firecrackers still going off, when I started smelling smoke.  To make a long story short, a fire was blazing in the woods behind us.  It was the crackling noise of the brush and trees (that were rapidly being consumed in its flames) that were making the popping sounds that I was hearing.  Ken pointed out to me where the flames were coming toward us through the trees and shortly thereafter, we were asked to evacuate.  We took our dog, Ben’s dog, and the cat and left.  That evening we returned to an ashen covered home with no damage whatsoever.

The field and woods behind us, however, could make no such claim.  They had been burned to almost nothing, leaving naked and charred trees scattered between us and Hwy 5.  What once masked the noise of the interstate, with its overgrown bushes and lush green trees, had quickly disappeared.  What now remained, lay smoldering on the earth’s floor.

Later that evening, Ken and I witnessed the most spectacular sunset, made possible by the haze and smoke from the blaze just hours before.  It amazes me how God can take something so destructive and bring beauty from it.

The next morning I went for a walk down the path where the fire had come and was stopped by the firefighters who waited with hoses bursting with water and helicopters hovering overhead with bags of wet relief (hence the crop circles in my corn ‘field’).  I looked out toward the highway, across the blackened soil, viewing something absolutely breathtaking.  Trees had been seared with the flames from the night before and the ground was scorched and bare but so beautiful.  There was no color except blackened earth and smoldering white ash.

I stood there thinking how clean everything looked.  The day before when Ken and I had walked by, the ground was covered with masses of bushes, flowering weeds and treetops filled with green leaves that rustled in the wind.  I enjoyed the scenery.  However, what was there was now gone and the scenery was somehow almost even more beautiful.

I thought about how I have sometimes felt like the scene before me – scorched and consumed by life’s trials.  It has been at those times, when the junk has been burned out of my life and I have been laid bare and purified before the Lord, that He has been able to grow me and use me most.  When all the brush has been cleared away and the ground has been made sterile, then He is able to work.

When I’ve allowed things to become overgrown and can’t see through the woods because of the brush in my life, sometimes it has taken a fire to clean things out of my life.  Sometimes that’s the only way God can get our attention to tell us He wants to do something big in our lives but the ground isn’t ready for planting.  Sometimes it takes a trial – a fiery trial.  And sometimes after the heat dies down and the flames are out, we can see the beauty in what seemed so hard and burned so fiercely.  We can see how much we grew because of it.  And though often extremely painful, sometimes we are even able to see how necessary it really was.

This third I will bring into the fire. I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God.’  -Zechariah 13:9

Lord, I admit that I don’t want to go through trials that you deem necessary, but the ones you have allowed in my life have been for my good and I know it beyond a doubt.  Help me to glean wisdom from each fire you allow to burn and may I be refined, knowing that you indeed are my God and are perfecting me through each one.  May it be You who receives glory through the cleansing.

His,

Sherri

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