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WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS!
Today’s Message of Encouragement from Discovering A BETTER LIFE MINISTRIES
(Stories of Real People, Real Events, Real Places)
Because they provide
Spiritual FOOD FOR THOUGHT
To HELP PEOPLE Find PEACE and HOPE
Don't follow me! Follow Jesus and receive God's grace. Jesus declared, “I am the way, I am the truth and the life.
The only way to the Father is through me.”
(John 10:10; 14:6)
WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS!
Friends, in all seriousness, Australia often endures extreme weather conditions, such as bush fires, floods, droughts, and cyclones.
Each year, ours is a nation with Catastrophic Fire Danger Ratings and Devastating Flood Warnings. However, we can always have hope that there will be better days ahead!
Things can look so bleak and dismal when you are in the middle of a crisis, such as our recent COVID-19 pandemic, the present Insane Russian Invasion of Ukraine, which could precipitate a full-scale WAR in Europe, a family feud, a company facing bankruptcy, The Stock Exchange in a depressed state, or your health diagnosis is terminal, or you have just been made redundant from a job you love and there is no prospect of finding other employment.
You name it, the list could go on and on, and the result is, all too often, great anxiety and fear!
Unfortunately, some people give up too soon - with victory just over the horizon! While others give way to despair, even when God is calling them to hope! Such people forget that what sometimes looks like defeat to us is an opportunity for the Almighty to work His amazing Grace in our lives. Allow me to provide an example for you.
The devastation caused by massive firestorms in Australia during the past few years has become international news. And deservedly so!
Almost every state, and millions of hectares of rain-starved land, have been ravaged by fast-moving fires. Even at the time of my writing this article, fires, and floods are raging here in Australia! Many homes have been destroyed, lives have been lost, and hundreds of people have been made homeless.
The words used by our Prime Minister and State Premiers, environmentalists, and news reporters include “devastating,” “catastrophic,” and “horrendous.”
However, when Springtime comes, some of the burnt-out areas will show amazing resilience. While there have been very real losses and although some of the most heavily burned timberlands 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. Paradoxically, 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.
No, the fires presently raging throughout Australia are not good news! Amazingly, within weeks of these devastating fires, we will also be able to see green sprouts rising from the charred stumps. And we can be sure that, come Springtime, there will be new life poking through blackened earth everywhere! Sadly, arsonists certainly didn’t do anyone a favour with their evil deeds. And the people who have lost loved ones, homes, businesses, pastureland 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’d like to make today is simply to say, that those grim situations I have referred to, 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 people, burned-over places allow new growth to occur.
Friend, the message of hope that Christians can proclaim right now stands in stark contrast to, what some broadcast media people 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, bushfires, and modern-day carbon emissions? For what it’s worth, I ask you to consider the iconic poem by Dorothea Mackellar which she wrote in 1904, i.e. over one hundred years ago! It is a graphic reminder that nothing much has changed, as far as our climate is concerned, during the past 121-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, 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 whatever anxiety, fear, insecurity, or grim situations you’re facing in your personal life.
If so, we believe we can help you by offering you two booklets, titled, “How to Overcome Fear” and “WHERE TROUBLE CAN’T HURT YOU!
To obtain your complimentary copies, write to Discovering A BETTER LIFE, BETHANIE ON THE PARK, Unit 49/2 Plantation Street, Menora, Western Australia 6050. Or email us at: abl-alb@omninet.net.au
“Surround yourself with positive influences.
When you are surrounded by negative
thinkers, image, or materials, it is
easy to get bogged down in
hopelessness!”
Friend, if you would like to read more human-interest stories, we invite you to visit our Website Blog at:
"Silent Prayer"- by Sherry Anne
To hear and view this ~Video~ Please click on the link below
Sherry Anne's Biography
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