WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS!
Friends, in all seriousness, Australia often endures extreme weather
Conditions, such as, bush fires, floods and cyclones.
Today, ours is a nation with a Catastrophic Fire Danger
rating even higher than Extreme. However, we can have hope that there will be better days ahead!
Today’s Message of Encouragement from Discovering A BETTER LIFE MINISTRIES
(Stories of Real People, Real Events, Real Places) Is dedicated to HELPING Men and Women Find HOPE
THROUGH SHARING GOD’S GRACE and LOVE
(Ron Bainbridge, Editor) (December 23rd, 2019)
WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS!
Friend, things can look so bleak and dismal when you are in the middle of a crisis. A nation is tense. A family is feuding. A company is facing bankruptcy. The Stock Exchange is in a depressed state. The diagnosis is frightening. You name it the list could go on and on.
Unfortunately, some people give up too soon - with victory just over the horizon! While others give way to despair, when God is calling them to hope! Such people forget that what looks like defeat to us is opportunity for the Almighty. Here’s an example for you.
The current devastation caused by massive firestorms in Australia has become international news. And deservedly so! Many forests throughout Australia are ablaze and it has become the worst natural disaster in Australia’s recorded history, surpassing the “Ash Wednesday” bushfires of 1983 that claimed 75 lives.
Today, almost every state and millions of hectares of rain-starved land are being ravaged by fast-moving fires. Even at the time of my writing this article, fires are still raging in South. Australia, Victoria, NSW and Queensland, as well as here in Western Australia.
The words used by premiers, environmentalists, and news reporters include “devastating,” “catastrophic,” and “horrendous.” Some experts are saying the land might never recover from possibly the worst fire season ever experienced in this nation.
However Friend, when spring-time comes, some of the now burnt-out areas will show amazing resilience. While there have been very real losses and although some of the most heavily burned timberland will take generations to heal fully, the consensus of the experts is that what happened will generate unforeseen benefits. These benefits, by the way, are not making the headlines the destructive fires are receiving.
The fires, as devastating as they have been, will have cleaned out huge amounts of dead and small-growth plants, which will be recycled as nutrients into the soil and certain animal species will have more habitat area available to them.
Amazingly, within weeks of some of these fires having passed through, we will also be able to see green sprouts rising from the charred stumps. And we can be sure that, come spring-time, there will be new life poking through blackened earth everywhere!
No, the fires presently raging throughout Australia are not good things!
Arsonists certainly didn’t do anyone a favour with their evil deeds. And the people who have lost loved ones, or homes or businesses or pasture land or stock on account of them can take scant comfort from what has happened, or will eventually happen as the scorched earth transforms itself.
However, the point I want to make today is simply to say, that grim situations often have positive by-products we didn’t see while holding on for dear life through some ordeal.
Friend, hope sees heaven through the thickest clouds. Because, when the smoke clears, it’s still there! You see, in forests and in people, burned-over places allow new growth to occur.
The message of hope that Christians can proclaim right now stands in stark contrast to what some broadcast media have given airtime to in the context of the bushfire tragedy, namely, the voice of the ‘global warming’ bandwagon.
Do they have a case? Might there be a link between Australia’s current droughts, floods and bushfires and modern-day carbon emissions? For what it’s worth, I ask you to consider the iconic poem by Dorothea Mackellar that she wrote in 1904, i.e. over a century ago. It is a graphic reminder that nothing much has changed, as far as our climate is concerned, during the past 115-years!
“My Country” © 1904 Dorothea MacKellar
The love of field and coppice, of green and shaded lanes, Of ordered woods and gardens is running in your veins. Strong love of grey-blue distance, brown streams and soft, dim skies- I know but cannot share it, my love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror-the wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests, all tragic to the moon, The sapphire-misted mountains, the hot gold hush of noon, Green tangle of the brushes where lithe lianas coil, And orchids deck the tree-tops, and ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky, When, sick at heart, around us we see the cattle die- But then the grey clouds gather, and we can bless again The drumming of an army, the steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country! Land of the rainbow gold, For flood and fire and famine she pays us back threefold. Over the thirsty paddocks, watch, after many days, The filmy veil of greenness that thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country, a wilful, lavish land- All you who have not loved her, you will not understand- Though earth holds many splendours, wherever I may die, I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly.
Friend, perhaps you’d like some help in working through some grim situations you’re facing in your personal life. If so, I believe we can help you, through a FREE booklet we are offering, which is titled “WHERE TROUBLE CAN’T HURT YOU.”
To obtain your copy, write to Discovering A BETTER LIFE, P.O. Box 1540, Albany, Western Australia 6331. You can also request your copy by Phone on: (08) 98 418 418, or E-mail us at: abl-alb@omninet.net.au
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When you are surrounded by negative
thinkers, image, or materials, it is
easy to get bogged down in
hopelessness.”
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