C Squared

I Peter 1:6-7 -- "In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

Some of the world's largest forest fires rage out of control for weeks on end - generating micro-weather pockets that can give birth to huge fiery tornadoes.  These fire demons cause untold amounts of damage, loss of life, and can drain the budget of any good smoke-eater team in record time. And it all starts with a tiny spark. 

In the year 2000 we Floridians fought some of our worst forest fires to date. In fact, miles away from any of our true National Forests, Orange Park and it's surrounding suburbs was covered in a perpetual cloud of thick, orange smoke. It was so bad in our little neck of the woods at the time, that we - along with all of our neighbors - took to the garden hoses to start soaking our roof tops. In the haze we stood elbow to elbow watching tiny embers rain down from that distant memory of a sky. Watering our houses was one way to make sure we didn't become the next name on the list of families that were devastated by fire that year. It didn't always work. 

I can remember looking up into that choked-out summer afternoon trying desperately to breath. Trying to keep an eye on the boys inside the house while manning the garden hose, my gaze held to a single floating ember as it fell to the ground and fizzled out in the wet grass with not so much as a sound. It occurred to me that the little fire-starter needed a lot of things to go just right in order to get a really good blaze going. And though, technically we were in the middle of drought - Florida was still a pretty humid place. Even well below our record water table for the year it seemed that it would take a small miracle to get a huge fire going from a teeny-tiny little fleck of warm debris. So very many ducks had to line up in a row.

But man, when they DID ..... whew! Look out Florida! Once the record-breaking inferno started that summer - it seemed there was just no stopping it. Not even a village manning hoses in a preemptive strike calmed those hot winds. 

Our dreams can seem an awful lot like those tiny floating embers. God has given each of us a unique gift and then spawned a beautiful dream to match it. Sometimes, however, it seems that our ducks look more like a disturbed anthill than the straight and prefect row we desire. No matter how hard we try or how bravely we push forward - the little ember just cannot set to blaze. 

The reason? Most often the mechanics of WHY our dreams can take so long to bare fruit comes to two things: C-Squared. Circumstance and Criticism. These two maniacal C's can be a well-maneuvered garden hose drowning out any chance of a would-be flame. 

BUT!

It really DOES only take a spark. When we remain in God's will and stay a focused course on His plan for our lives - we WILL be rewarded. The book of 1 Peter even addresses what frustration might come from the delays of our dream fulfillment. Delays happen - because God allows them to. Some of us need a little more delay than others in order to "prefect our faith", it's true. But God's timing is perfect. ALWAYS! If our spark lands on wet grass for a time, know that God WILL provide a wind to pick it up and carry us on to ground more conducive to the flame we need and want to become.