Playing with fire is dangerous I was always told by my mother and grandmother and anyone else who caught me in front of a roaring fireplace, staring into the flames, entranced by the fizz and burn, warmed by the heat.
I heeded their warning.
It was my brother who pushed the logs in the grate with a poker and threw in wadded up pieces of paper to watch them catch and spark.
My youngest son showed the same propensity until he had a run in with a firework some years ago…but that’s quite another story.
At Footlights we have a fire-pit, a rather large one at that.
Hubs tells me I pile too much wood into it…and when I stand back to admire the blaze I tend to agree.
After the flames have died down and I have watched until it is just smoldering at the bottom of the pit I go inside and leave it alone until the next time.
Sometimes I am surprised when I wander out the following morning and hover my hand over the ashes.
They always look so touchable, so deliciously soft in their powdery remains,
that I am tempted to bury my hands up to my wrists. But I hold back when I feel the heat emanating from the cinders.
In my imagination I harvest tin foil packets of cowboy stew or baked potatoes from their fiery depths.
Last morning I stirred up the embers with a stick after a whole day and night of rain, I still had brambles and dried wood to burn and wondered if I could rekindle the fire.
Smoke began to rise and I heard my mother saying to me,
“There’s no smoke without fire.”
So I gathered the nests of vines and sticky brush and tossed them into the pit, pressing down hard in an attempt to ignite the dead wood,
Then I sat down and listened, still entranced by the fizz and crackle, enjoying the smoky smell as it drifted away from my face.
All was calm while I waited…
Patiently…
Just as I was beginning to think the hours of rain had done the job the whole thing went up in flames,
It burned furiously and I was glad I hadn’t been caught, by impatience, in the inferno that now rose before me.
As it died down I added more fuel and felt my face heating up.
At the end of the day when I looked in the mirror I noticed there was a glow to my cheeks.
Moses’ face had shone after he’d been in conversation with God on Mount Sinai. (Exodus 34:35)
While I am no Moses, I am a believer who knows God’s love for me smolders in my heart like the stubborn embers hidden beneath the ashes at the centre of my fire-pit.
And sometimes His love inflames my face with a smile.
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