The fields are on fire. In places like Guatemala and Uganda, the white plumes rise like tufts of air-spun cotton across the countryside as the farmers burn to prepare for the planting of their crops.
The scent of sweet smoke lingers in the air. As I breathe it in, I hear familiar words of the Gardener.
“The tending leads to the harvest.”
I long to bend low, with hands outstretched, pulling life from the soil and clay. I hunger to cradle the new and the awesome. But in the tending, in the back-breaking labor that feels long and hard and without reward, I feel like the plumes.
I am frail. I am wispy. I am smoke.
A vapor. Here for a moment and then gone – perhaps never to see the blessing in the burning.
I breathe in again, and the sweet smoke smiles. It reminds me that it exists only because of the fire.
And the Gardner whispers, “you are connected to the flame.”
Selah.
If you are on fire for God, don’t worry about the winds of adversity. Wind will blow out a candle, but it only makes a fire burn brighter.~ Reinhard Bonnke