I felt like I needed to see the enormity of the fire damage from the top of the hill.
To draw some sort of line around it in my mind.
It made it feel heavier that way,
face to face with the wasteland;
but somehow necessary for healing to stand above it all.
We didn’t stop to gawk at people sorting or sifting.
We went to try to cope with this piece of our home that was now stripped away.
As I stood there and looked out through the silhouette of charred trees and debris, past the destruction
I noticed most the contrast of the sky and the mountains beyond.
They looked bluest against the things that had been the darkest burned.
That was when the deep truth of what our pastor spoke about today fully burrowed in.
In the book of 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about how out of all the things he could boast about in his life,
what he chose to boast about most was what he called “the thorn in his flesh;”
his own private struggle that God had allowed him to suffer with
because only through pain and suffering can we truly be shaped into the best version of who we are created to be.
I thought about how we all have our own thorns.
As the pastor had said,
maybe it’s a cancer diagnosis.
Maybe it’s a troubled marriage,
or an addiction we struggle to let go.
Maybe the destruction you see is no match for the destruction you suffer inside.
But, if we let it,
This Thorn in our flesh can be the thing used to make us able to understand someone else’s struggle.
To help us come alongside.
To be able to say “Yes. I’ve been there, too.”
If we let it, it can be the thing that produces in us our life’s greatest testament to grace, and the most astounding beauty.
Like the trees and closest hills,
often what lies right in front of us looks dark.
Ruined.
A desolate wasteland stretching in every direction.
Sometimes we don’t recognize where we even are unless we look at the signs,
and sometimes all that was familiar is suddenly gone.
But if we lift up our eyes and we look past the places of our darkest moment,
we will see there is still blue sky,
an unchanged horizon,
and beauty that waits just beyond.
