Don't Waste Your Fires

A couple of years ago at the Peace service, Reverend Grandsire was preaching from Isaiah - the story of God’s people in the dessert. I was in a dessert of my own, still trying to recover from the flood, divorce, and my father’s death.

It was a beautiful sermon, but the real lesson for me came as she prepared for communion. She used glass goblets as a metaphor for how God works through us. Lynn reminded us how God brought life from the dessert. It's the same with glass blowers, she said. They start with sand, add the heat of the fire and make something beautiful, something useful for others.

I was in the middle of hot burning flames of my own for sure, but somehow, through the visual of those hand blown glass goblets, I felt a little glimmer of hope.

In that moment, God spoke to me.

“Tammy, don’t waste your fires. You've been through the heat. Let Me use those heartbreaks for good. You can be useful to Me."

God spoke those words to me during my dark time, and I think he whispers them to us all. To me, that’s what staying in faith means. As bad as things seem, we have to keep our eyes on Him. As easy as it would be to let our hearts get hard, we have to keep them open to God’s promises for us.

If we will let Him, God will take us- battered and broken and lifeless - and make us new again. He can literally transform us. We might feel like lumps of grey, dirty sand. We might feel torched with the flames that life throws our way. But it might be those very flames that transform us into something God can use.

During that low point in my life, it was easy to feel sorry for myself. I was stuck in a place of feeling sorry for myself. But, during that Peace service, the Holy Spirit stirred within me, and I felt hope. I wasn’t sure how He would use me, I’m still not, but I know my job is to shift my focus away from myself and towards the thought of using “my fires” as a way to help others.