There is purpose in heat and pressure, it changes you. The very act of facing change is terrifyingly beautiful, a stand in courage. Do you know how courageous you are? Every morning you put yourself toward a new future having no idea what it will bring.
Have you ever stopped to look at a Paintbrush Flower? Also known as Prairie Fire, these flowers put their face to the sunrise every morning until Fall, die and resurrect the next Spring. They thrive in harsh conditions; hardy, fearless and beautiful for as long as humans have lived here. In their place of Creation, these wildflowers know nothing of their meaning in the universe or the value of their essence beyond living and dying.
I want to be more than a Prairie Fireflower. I would rather be a fire racing across a prairie, than to live my life as an existence. When my time comes and this life of mine passes before the Holy Fire of my Creator, what will it all become? There is absolute validity in beauty and goodness as well as in the beauty of pain that is endured. Yet it seems that human beings put greater value in the suffering, prejudice and injustices, hurt and shocking experiences than in Goodness that has followed them in life. They seem to wear suffering like a scarf, holding onto painful memories for a lifetime and not letting them go lest the memory be lost. Day after day suffering is recanted, ever hoping the consequence of holding onto pain will inevitably burnish those painful memories into something of matchless beauty, the way heat and pressure transforms carbon into diamonds or as gold is purified by smelting.
But what if that’s all wrong? What the essence of our lives become as a priceless diamond by the real-time pressure that we live with every day – the struggle to forgive? This would mean forgiveness is the formula that transforms suffering and hardship we endure into flawless perfection. That the choice to let the memory go is itself the pressure, the powerful catalyst of transformation that turns our ashes to troy ounces and sorrow into diamonds. What if those very acts of forgiveness – big and small, seen or unseen – are the very purpose for which we live and breathe and have our being? Learning from pain, and steering clear of who or what causes it is certainly right. With that in your pocket, consider that the pressure of forgiveness is living your best life, while holding tight to the weight of painful memories is a daily dose of dying. We all have been granted a perfect measure of faith when we first drew breath, and the innate ability to know truth, and be guided by it. Truly living is letting go of dying.
Without faith we can’t forgive. Without forgiveness we can’t be saved. Without a saviour, we lose faith.
________________________
Isaiah 61:3: To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
Ephesians 2:8-10: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
