Sunday, December 17, 2023
The Pile of Thin Pieces, to Fill Between.
Everything provides some heat.
Numbers 23:19
God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
2 Corinthians 1:18-19
As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been ‘Yes and No.’ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’
…
Words of Grace For Today
Out to stoke the fire, and split some short chunks of wood.
Amazing how things get smaller in the process of heating with wood.
First there is a tree, tall and strong, which dies or gets knocked over by the winds, ferocious as they are at times.
The tall and strong tree loses the ability to grow branches and the old ones are the first to break off, some when the tree comes crashing down, all 2000 to 3000 pounds of it.
Then slowly the ants and other processes eat at the tree until it is no more than dust dissolving into the dirt of the ground, unless …
unless I find it and cut off the branches that will be in the way, and sometimes cutting the log into two or three long pieces so I can pull it out of the woods.
In the yard I buck the log into short pieces, short enough to fit in the wood stove. Those full-stove-sized pieces get stacked for cold days, when I toss them into the stove, they burn producing the heat I need and end up as ash, which collects at the bottom of the stove, and from there I dump them in a pile to be used for various things.
There are all those not quite full-stove-sized pieces, which I set aside to split, or thinner sticks that I gather to cut up and stack for filler beside fatter logs.
Today those short, fat pieces were the ones I split (or chopped as it were) into pieces to cram in the wood stove to burn when I do not need the maximum heat the stove can produce. The climate change weather this winter has mostly been that kind of cold, barely below zero, not yet colder than -15⁰.
…
The Devil goes at us like I go at logs for heat, except the Devil’s purposes for us, cut into ever smaller pieces of anything good is to merely destroy every good thing God created.
Thankfully, God, knowing more force would only reduce us to smaller pieces for the Devil’s work, uses steadfast love and forgiveness to rescue us, bind us, heal us, and make us able to live out that same love and forgiveness for other people.
Another day, getting cut up smaller, but healed and sent out ….
Ready?
Ready of not, God’s working on us.