Handling Firestorms

   My voice has not been the best of late and I didn’t really look forward to my ENT appointment last week. Looking at and doctoring ones vocal cords is not like nursing a boo-boo on the skin, or sore muscles, or a headache. Until appointment time when a camera gets stuck down my throat do I get to see what’s going on and why my voice is fading, again. My biggest problem is myself and the overusing and stress I put on my voice, which I’m going to have to control from now on. I’m also not using my voice box correctly, which has my speech therapist all in a huff, so I’m on self therapy to break the habit of using my throat to speak instead of my vocal cords. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Of course, the good news about any doctor’s appointment, I was given another appointment for three months from now, so things can’t be all that bad, right?

   It seems we’re always making dates and appointments for ourselves. Christmas is in 16 days, with New Years day following close behind in another 7 days; another year almost gone. I have a wedding anniversary in 4 days and another birthday in 65 days, which beats the alternative. School will be out for the summer in about 180 days. And most important for rednecks and competitive couch potatoes alike, the Daytona 500 is in 78 days. Of course all this could be null and void if we discover the Mayan’s were truly on to something when their calendar runs out of time in 13 days. Hide and watch.
   While tending his livestock one day, an Australian farmer spied a large plume of smoke on the horizon and feared the worse, a prairie fire. Known for their swift and inescapable all consuming fury, the farmer watched the smoke hoping to discover the direction of travel of the fire. As the smoke cloud grew taller and wider the farmer knew the fire was headed straight for his homestead. There was only one thing the farmer could do to save himself, his family and his livelihood, that was to burn his own fields before the fire reached his land. If he could burn his fields and spent the fuel needed by the prairie fire, he could stand on his porch and watch the fire pass him by. The area protecting the farmer had already been satisfied by fire and was protecting him from the firestorm. That which had been sacrificed, now protected him from death.
   [Romans 6:1-14; 13:14 & Galatians 3:26-27] We have, or will, at sometime in our life, face a firestorm or two and the greatest all consuming storm in our life is sin. When we disobey God and live life pleasing ourselves and not God, the one who gave us life, we suffer a spiritual death that we can never escape, outside of Christ. “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-26). Jesus went to the cross, gave his life for you and me, in love, for the atonement of our sins. When we are baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of our sins (Acts 2:38) and “…if we walk in the light as he is in the light” (1 John 1:5-10) or sins are forgiven daily. Our repentance of sin, baptism and continual obedience to God’s will has put us in Christ. We can compare that to the Australian farmer who is standing in the pasture already consumed by fire, it can’t burn again. Christ has shed his blood for the forgiveness of sin and has overcome death never to die again. I want to be in Christ when I face that appointment none of us likes to talk about, because the fury of God’s wrath can not reach me there. Jesus has already sacrificed himself for me so that I can be void of sin and eternal punishment.