ASHES OR EMBERS

For the record, the events referenced in this post happened before any relevant ban on backyard burning. 

I’ve been setting a lot of fires lately.    No, I haven’t finally snapped and decided to burn it all down.

I had some boxes of old office papers taking up space in my garage.  There was the off-chance that something in there had an old credit card number on it so I couldn’t send it all to the landfill, but it was too much for our little home paper shredder.  I (with my country tail) had the AWESOME idea of dumping the folders into a metal trash can and lighting it all up all Hollywood

alleyway style. 

In the movies when someone tosses a lighter onto a pile of classified papers, the whole stack goes up in a column of flames and a few minutes later all that remains is a pile of ashes.   This may come as a shock, but ---- Hollywood lied.  Paper burns quickly.  Well, A paper burns quickly.  A folder stuffed with 5 years of sign-in sheets does not.  After an hour spraying lighter fluid and  stirring the folders I had a 1 inch layer of ash covering 4 feet of smoky, ashy, and thoroughly un-burned office papers.

All day.  That’s how long it took for fire to consume a few boxes of files.  All.  Frickin’. Day.  Two hours after sunset I gave up.  I sprayed the contents of the trash can with water from the hose.  Set the metal lid in place, took a looong shower and went to bed.  That was a Monday.

Friday, 4 days later I thought, “What the crap do I do with a trashcan full of ashes?”  I could have bagged it all up and put it in the dumpster; but then I thought, “Ashes.  Carbon.  Biodegraded.  The soil will absorb it,” so I turned the trash can over at the edge of the woods behind my house.  

A few minutes later, I saw smoke, FRESH smoke, coming out of the woods at the edge of my yard.  I got the hose and the shovel and carefully doused the tiny new fire I’d started.  And THAT was when I began reflecting on the difference between ASHES and EMBERS.

Ashes and embers are both the remains of a fire, and they look the same: grayed black, blackened gray, charred, powdered, withered, empty, fit for nothing but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot.  That’s what ashes are, but when the wind blows, you realize that embers are something different. 

A few minutes in the spring breeze and some of the dead-looking remains of my trash fire started glowing.  Some of the ashen pieces turned fire red.  They weren’t ashes.  They were EMBERS. 

Embers are the ashes that refused to die.   they were just waiting for a gust of oxygen on the breeze to ignite.    And they did not ignite gradually.  From cold and seemingly dead, at the touch of wind, the embers changed suddenly into red hot coals.  And the coals turned the pile of ashes into a fire.

WE all go through the fire.  People, systems, circumstances, sometimes just the ubiquitous entropy of a fallen world pile on intending to consume you, to make you into a withered, empty, used up nothing, to throw you down and trod you underfoot.  Ashes.

The weekend after Jesus was crucified, the disciples were all ashes: scattered, withered, defeated.  By Sunday afternoon they were already blowing in the wind, scattering to Emaus and wherever.  But when they encountered Jesus risen from the dead, and He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22), they were re-ignited.  The light in them shone again and it wasn’t long before  there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them (Acts 2: 3).  

You don’t get to decide if or when you go through the fire, but you do get to choose what happens when the smoke clears.  You can accept the imposed role and lie in the dust until you’re swept away ---- like ashes. 

Or, you can inhale the breath of life and let your little light glow fire red.  You can receive the Holy Spirit and ignite.  With the Holy Spirit dwelling in you like fire shut up in your bones, you can rise from the ashes.

We all go through the fires of life, but those fires don’t have the last word.  We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed—always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body (2 Corinthians 4: 8-10). 

If you have Jesus you will get burned, but you will not be ashes.  With Jesus, you are ---- an EMBER. 

So, relax.  Pray.  Feel the breath of God moving over you and in you.  Breathe.  Now get up out of those ashes and go set the world on fire. 

 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

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WHEN GOD LETS YOU HURT

How do we respond to suffering that we don’t deserve?  How do we deal with pain that is not just punishment for our sins? And why, why does God even let such situations happen?

The Bible doesn’t ignore these questions.  God answers them.

Open your Bible to the book of Job and hear a message about WHEN GOD LETS YOU HURT.

Listen well.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer, and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church and the executive director of SAYNO (Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization) in Montgomery, Alabama.

Call  334-288-0577
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

If you enjoy our work, please help support our work in the community. Send a donation of any amount by check or money order.
Mail all contributions to :
Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
Montgomery, AL 36116

PURPOSE, FOCUS, LIONS, & PROPHETS

God gives purpose, but focus has to come from you.

1 Kings chapter 13 records the story of an unnamed man of God from Judah.  This man of God had a mission.  He had a message from God to deliver to the king who was defiling the altar in Bethel.   The man of God delivered that message with courage and integrity.  The man of God spoke truth to power and God confirmed His word with signs that stayed the king’s order to arrest the man of God.  The man of God fulfilled his Divinely appointed purpose in the face of corruption and personal attacks.

But then things got easy.

The king invited the man of God to rest, refresh himself, and enjoy a reward from the royal treasury.   The man of God replied, “If you were to give me half your house, I would not go in with you; nor would I eat bread nor drink water in this place.   For so it was commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘You shall not eat bread, nor drink water, nor return by the same way you came.’ ” 

So he went another way and did not return by the way he came to Bethel (1 Kings 13:8-11).

Having kept to his purpose, the man of God was on his way home, but he stopped to rest near where all this had happened.  While he was resting, doing nothing, just chillin’, an old prophet from Bethel caught up to him.  The old prophet invited the man of God to come back to his house in Bethel to rest and have a meal.    

The man of God replied, I cannot return with you nor go in with you; neither can I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place. For I have been told by the word of the Lord, ‘You shall not eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by going the way you came.’ ” (1 Kings 13:16-17).

But the old prophet said, “I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.’ ” (1 Kings 13:18).

Well, the man of God was tired, and hungry, and thirsty after his long journey, and he still had a long journey ahead of him.  It was a sweet offer, and it came from an old saint, a prophet.  No, it wasn't the what God had said before, but it would be so nice to  take the old prophet at his word and enjoy a home-cooked meal.

The man of God lost his focus.  He went home with the old prophet.  They ate.  They drank.   They talked. They chilled. 

Problem is that the end of verse 18 says that the old prophet was lying to him.

He wasn’t lying about being a prophet; he was lying about having a new message from God.

(Now why would a genuine prophet lie, especially to another man of God?   Perhaps the od prophet just really, really wanted to talk to the man who’d stood up to the king.  He didn’t mean any harm to the man of God.  The prophet probably figured that a little lie was O.K. as long as he said “I decree and I declare” before he told the lie.)

Funny thing is that when you lose focus, it’s often the people who distracted you who are the first to call you out for getting off track.

^Now it happened, as they sat at the table, that the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back; ^ and he cried out to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord, and have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you, ^ but you came back, ate bread, and drank water in the place of which the Lord said to you, “Eat no bread and drink no water,” your corpse shall not come to the tomb of your fathers.’ “ (1 Kings 13: 20-22)

Of course at this point the man of God hops on his own donkey and hits the road, but a lion snatches him off and kills him. 

Only, the lion doesn’t harm the donkey, and the donkey doesn’t try to run away, and the lion doesn’t eat the man he killed.  The lion and the donkey just stand there over the body on the side of the road so everybody passing by can see that “It is the man of God who was disobedient to the word of the Lord. Therefore the Lord has delivered him to the lion, which has torn him and killed him….” (1 Kings 13:26).

The man of God had a purpose; he had an anointing; and he had the power of the Holy Ghost.  But he lost focus.

In a moment of rest and reverie, he let somebody convince him to do what God had told him not to do.

God gives each of us a purpose but when we’re tired, when we’re just chillin’, or  when we feel all good about a particular success we tend to lose focus.  We tend to drop our guard and get a little slack.  We become susceptible to the temptation to compromise on the fine points of God’s directions.  We get enticed by the offer of a slight and understandable deviation from the Lord’s commands. 

It’s not like we denounce our calling.  It’s not like we’re following the idolatrous king into sin.  We’re just taking a little break with some good people and hanging out when we should be humping it down the road in the direction God already told us to go.

We have to stay focused.

We have to keep on the grind.

We have to keep going and going until we get to the point where God says we can rest and be refreshed.

You should hear the counsel of godly men and women, but the weight of the decision is yours alone to bear.

In the end, no body----- and I mean NO body------ should convince you to deviate from the purpose and plan God has given you.

Remember that the lion didn’t kill the lying old prophet. 

The lion killed the man of God who lost his focus and deviated from God’s plan.

God will give you purpose, but you have to provide the focus.

 

That said, though I stayed up late last night, but you'll have to excuse me while I go exercise for 30 minutes and knock some things off my to-do list.

I’ll chill when I’m done.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a pastor, writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Call me at 334-288-0577
Email me at atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme@blogspotcom.