Wet wood...

It's another rainy day in South Mississippi, not nearly as rainy as last week when we had major flooding in the area, but rainy all the same. Maybe it's that rain, combined with too many "survival shows" on tv that prompted today's random thought about wet wood.

Lately I have realized that I am tired, not physically tired, but weary. Most parents can relate, especially those parents of teenagers. While these children are precious gifts from God, when they turn into teenagers they can become....difficult at times.

But it's not just having teenagers that can make you tired. Sometimes life is just so daily, it has a way of wearing away till we are simply saturated and weighed down. Then, no matter how much we try to shake it off, we are like wet wood on the survival shows. We try to start a fire within but promising sparks fall flat and fizzle out with a sigh.

It's not just one thing, it's a million and one things. Like rain drops that start slow and then build in force till they are a wall of water, they leave a person cold and tired and surrounded by wet. It's hard to even hold much hope for the sparks anymore. We used to have a saying in our church, "If that don't light your fire, then your wood's wet." I guess that my wood is just wet.

That's when I remembered a story about some wet wood. It wasn't during a rainy season, in fact the people were in the third year of a drought. The ruler of the day was King Ahab and he was not what anyone would call a Godly man, plus he was married to an evil woman named Jezebel who was a worshipper of Baal. In the middle of all this chaos was God's man, Elijah and the setting for a major confrontation.

I won't retell the whole story here, there's a link where you can read it in its entirety at the end of the blog; but my favorite part is when both Elijah and the prophets of Baal set up bulls for sacrifice. Whichever God answered with fire from heaven would win. The prophets of Baal failed miserably and when it was Elijah's turn, he did something very odd. He poured water all over his wood. Not just a little, but so much that it filled a moat around the altar. His wood was WET!

All that wet wood didn't stop God from doing something beyond amazing. He sent down fire, lit that wet wood, burned up the sacrifice, and even dried up the water around it, all with wet wood. It really didn't matter that the wood was tired and wet, God used it to burn BRIGHT for all to see!

This really gives me hope. Maybe others are like me, and have been feeling a little weary lately - like the wood's wet and the fire has just gone out. Maybe you've even tried to get the fire going again, but nothing has worked. It seems...impossible. But nothing is impossible with God.

Wet wood or not, I believe we can still burn for God so that the whole world will see. Today I discovered that it helps to get in the car and just drive and pray. As I did, the prayers that came from my lips gave me hope...hope for fire! So turn up the praise music and allow God to start the fire inside. Have hope and burn brightly my friends.

Elijah and the prophets of Baal