{"id":1431,"date":"2011-03-21T03:00:29","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T08:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/?p=1431"},"modified":"2011-03-24T12:06:20","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T17:06:20","slug":"fire-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/21\/fire-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/0416_nbr_a_fire1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1432  alignright\" title=\"0416_nbr_a_fire1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/0416_nbr_a_fire1-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/0416_nbr_a_fire1-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/0416_nbr_a_fire1.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>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 \u00a0(John 16:33) &#8220;In this world you will have trouble.&#8221; If you are like me you want to run from that trouble. But I wonder if it might represent &#8220;friendly fire?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Just \u00a0like 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&#8212;growth.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t enjoy difficulty, and I know you don&#8217;t either. But next time we find some part of our life ablaze, maybe we should pause to consider whether what&#8217;s being consumed was dead and needed to go, in order to make way for new growth.<\/p>\n<p>Friendly, fire?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1431"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1435,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions\/1435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}