A Place of Extremes

https://www.google.com/search?q=fireplace+pictures

Fire!  It can be a beautiful thing!  It is a divine source of heat when I am cold!   As we drive across South Dakota this early, cold morning I picture the early Native Americans gathered around the fire in the tee pee getting dressed or outside while Mom is cooking.  Then my imagination takes me to the early settlers as they crossed this massive state, again, taking refuge around the campfire to keep warm or preparing a meal.  Even in our modern world there is something warm and inviting about a fireplace, (especially at Christmas!) as I sit comfortably in front of it relaxing on the sofa. 

https://www.google.com/search?q=raging+fire

But when I turn my TV on and witness the horror the folks in Southern California have been facing, fire doesn't seem so beautiful.  They have lost their homes as wind driven flames devoured everything it touched.   It strikes me as I consider how much of our world and even daily lives are faced with these polar ideas.

A river whose waters allow for a refreshing swim can turn into a rushing and violent force when pounding torrential rains fill the banks to overflowing.  Food resting on the table as we sit to a meal can be wonderfully pleasing and satisfying unless the food is diseased or we eat ourselves into oblivion and obesity.  Medicine for an ailing body is wonderful until that same medicine is used to disorient and abuse our minds to escape a fallen world.

A worship service is a wonderful, spirit lifting experience until Satan wrecks havoc with the congregation causing dissension and strife.  Music can soothe the soul until it becomes a twisted form of satanic worship.  The tongue can say beautiful, kind words to build a person up and that same tongue can bring a body to tears with cruelty.  Love and marriage between two souls can be the most exquisite experience until sin enters in and destroys the relationship causing immeasurable pain and grief.

It seems like everything in our world has extremes from fire to love and everything in between!  There is the place in each of these ideas and so many more, where all is good and beautiful and then those same elements can make our world cold, dark, dreary, harsh and painful.

I am so glad we serve a God who is the one constant we can depend on...even when everything else in our world is ugly, sad, heartbreaking, violent or cruel.  It doesn't matter what we are going through, from vicious fires licking their tongues through a community claiming everything in it's path to the vicious tongues of gossip which breaks up relationships, to a raging river of water to raging emotions.   God is always beside us, always loving us, always ready to embrace our hearts when we allow Him in.

As you move through this next week, I suggest you consider the little things in your life, that under the right circumstances could become “big things;” or the good things in your life, that if turned upside down could become ugly things.  Don’t take for granted the good things, like love, family, your job, your church and certainly not your faith.  Without them, life would be difficult at best, and horrific at worst.  God is faithful and we have Him to thank for his steadfastness, love and consistency.