Devistation often rebuilds into something Beautiful

I started writing this a year or so ago. Tonight on the flight home I sat near a woman who was coming out to help rebuild some of the homes that burned in the fires. It made me think about this piece...and being thankful.

The devastation beautifully rebuilt

A man sits down after lighting a campfire while out camping in the wilderness one evening. He is completely unaware of the wind shift that is about to take place along that hillside. While he sits there the soft sound of winds start to rustle in the trees behind him. He hears the winds but thinks nothing of it. He is there, living in the moment unaware of what is about to take place.

The wind picks up several mall pieces of ash off that small campfire lifts them up, up, up into the sky like firefly’s dancing in the air. One small piece of ash falls onto a patch of dried up brush sitting within the forest. The leaves begin to smolder and eventually the brush ignites into a roaring flame. That flame is caught up into the winds and within minutes the entire field is lit up and on fire. In the days ahead the grounds and surrounding acres of beautiful countryside are burned down to black ashes and soot. The remaining effects are blacked, scared and ugly terrain. Sadly looking over the hillside it would be difficult to ever imagine that hill being beautiful again.

Winter hits just one month later and in coolness of one minute inside of one day snowflakes begin to fall from the sky. Within an hour there is a white blanket covering that hillside. For months the blackened land is covered, masked even with beauty we could not have foreseen. Time in that place seems to go in slow motion. Days tick by, hour by hour, minute by minute even second by second some days.

Slowly as times moves forward the skies begin to warm and the snow begins to melt away. The scared remains of the land are once again harshly revealed. Nothing is moving, nothing living it would almost seem. The warmth of the sun to the dark scorched land is like loving arms wrapped around that hillside. The hillside begins to warm and find strength. Somewhere, somewhere from within that hill small stems of greenery begin to pop out from within that scared rocky ground. The protection of that ‘blanket’ provided during that time of needed rest, the moisture, and the warmth of the sun has given the land the ability to grow once again. As the months and years move forward something surprising is revealed. That hillside within that forest had been beautiful by definition, but today the newly re-grown forest has taken on a completely different look and yet not. There is a degree of familiarity but at the same time a sense of newness, freshness, strength that wasn’t there originally.

Be encouraged. I dare say most of us shall face events in our lives that will wipe out the ‘life’ we had planned and foresaw. The amazing part is when our eyes are opened and we begin to see the beauty we could not and would not have seen before then.

It can take you by surprise the day the realization hits that the past misery can be replaced with something much more beautiful then one could have ever imagined for oneself it can take you by surprise and bring you to your knees in a sense of amazed gratitude. I would never wish one anyone I have met or will meet ahead in life the things that I have gone through, the pain that I have felt. The pains that I have faced may even seem to pail when you meet people who have walked similar roads in their own lives. However, I will say to anyone I meet that God can use those instances that bring us to our knees to draw us closer to Him and often times through that we begin to see what can be ahead for us and sometimes even catch a glimpse of the life ahead we may lead.