‘Tis the season for an outbreak of pyromania. I can hardly step outside without setting something on fire; leaf beds in the timber, sage grass in the pastures.

As I watched the fire burn tonight I noticed how it cleared out the underbrush, and in just a few days the black will be replaced by green shoots of new growth. That caused me to reflect on the fires we face in life.

From time to time all of us find ourselves in the heat. The fire could be with a child, or in our marriage, or in our business, or with our health, or with a relationship. Jesus said  (John 16:33) “In this world you will have trouble.” If you are like me you want to run from that trouble. But I wonder if it might represent “friendly fire?”

Just  like the fires I set on the farm clear out the underbrush and make way for new growth, I wonder if the fires we face are perhaps designed to clear out the dead wood and prepare our lives for something fresh and new—growth.

I don’t enjoy difficulty, and I know you don’t either. But next time we find some part of our life ablaze, maybe we should pause to consider whether what’s being consumed was dead and needed to go, in order to make way for new growth.

Friendly, fire?