One life. On fire.

      The faint smell of smoke greets me as my alarm informs of the time. It smells like camping, like a pine-wood fire way up in the mountains. A fire that somebody didn’t quite put out last night.

      I leave the house and walk into a haze. The smell is stronger outside. After a very few minutes, the smoke convinces me that exercise needs to happen somewhere else today.

{Up to the greenhouse. Out to the road.}

There it is. A plume of smoke bubbles vertically into the sky. As though something of honor, it is christened with pink and gold of morning. 

I don’t really know what is happening over there, but I know. I don’t see the fire. I can’t see the fire. No one I know has seen it. But there is not the shadow of a doubt, it is there. 

This makes me think. 

          One life. on fire. Huge impact. 

That one fire can touch areas so far removed from itself, that you cannot even know what -whom- is burning. 

The smell is in the air. It effects the way we live. We can see the evidence. 

One life. On fire.

May that be you. and me. 

love.Me.more

{John 12:24-26, Matthew 20:28}

My English: {With help from Strong’s Concordance}

This is very true: A Seed of wheat must fall into the earth and give away its breath, its life, or else that Seed will remain alone. But, by yielding it’s existence, the seed is multiplied. 

(Self-sacrifice is really self-preservation. Self-serving is self-destruction. The seed that protects itself has no fruit at harvest time. Only in giving is there gain.)

If you are a friend to your own life, if you fondle over your breath, you will smother it. But if you love temporal life less, you will be preserved. You will guard, keep, and save your breath for the place, time, and purpose of eternal life. 

If you are My friend, come walk with Me on the road I travel. Accompany Me. Be My servant. Wherever I go, My servant will go and do there what I ask of them. If you are My friend, your breath, will be prized by My Father. He will hold it dear. He will honor it. It will be beloved by the One who gave it: the One who also calls you to love it less. 

In exactly the same way as I ask you to love your life less, I came. I was born with the face of a human on this earth- not to be accompanied or served, but to perform menial duties, to serve, and to give up My breath, which means freedom for you. 

That’s the way I am.

    I gave My life to the soil of humanity. Will you?

        I walked through life as a servant. Will you?

            I gave My breath for you. But will you give yours for Me?

Whatever the cost, whatever is lost, despise not My cross,

love.Me.more