Fires, by Simon

Things really heated up in Cape Town at the start of this year.  Fires ripped through mountain ranges across the Cape Peninsula.  Cape Town residents were on high alert for more than a week.  Ashley and I watched fires rage through the night from our bedroom window.  One morning our suburb was engulfed in a thick fog of smoke with ash reigning from the sky.  Through the smoke and ash pierced a blood red sun.  Had we not known better, we would have thought we were at the edge of an erupting volcano.

Due to the grace of God and the outstanding work of local firemen and volunteers, very few lives and homes perished in the fires.  Ashley and I got an opportunity to put out a fire of two on one of our local paths.  The burning undergrowth had reignited the flora above and we were in the right place at the right time to quench it.  I have merged two photos taken from the same position to illustrate the extent of the devastation to the local landscape. 

Ashley and I have been learning a great deal from God through the fires.  Fires of this sort are actually a natural process in the Cape’s eco-system.  It provides the stimulus for seeds lying dormant to germinate and grow. The fire is both a destroyer and a refiner to the local flora called fynbos.  It burns up the old to make place for the new.  The ideal fire cycle is every 10 to 14 years.  Without these fires, ecologists say fynbos would become extinct.  Fynbos, meaning ‘fine bush’, only grows on the southern tip of Africa.  Famous to the fynbos family is the King Protea, South Africa’s national flower.  As much as 10 inches in diameter, it is the lion of the flower kingdom. 

As God’s children, how similar we are to fynbos!  By the world’s standards most of us are tucked away in apparent obscurity but in heaven’s eyes we are royalty! (1 Peter 2:9).  We bloom to the glory of our Father, yet the price of such glory is high. Our old nature must be burnt up and removed for His new nature in Christ to spring forth (1 Corinthians 5:17).  He exchanges our ashes for His beauty (Isaiah 61:3) and commissions us to spread His fragrance of Life throughout the world (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).