Have you ever watched a good sized fire burn? I mean a big, roaring, too hot to get close to bonfire? I lit one this evening. It was a perfect night for it. I decided to burn some wood that the city wouldn’t pick up along with some old bills and other things. I threw in stacks of papers and the fire grew, and the papers added colors to the flames.
As I was poking around the fire, making sure everything was burning, I noticed that wherever there was a thick stack of paper, it looked burned on the outside, but the papers on the inside where untouched. I could still read the words until I stirred them up and the fire consumed them.
Stack after stack, I did this until I was sure that all the papers were destroyed. Before I mixed them up, these papers were surviving a wickedly hot fire.
It dawned on me that our lives can often be like those stacks of papers. Today, we are compacted thickly with everything going on in our lives. Eventually, something comes along and ignites us on fire with a passion and purpose. That fire burns intensely, exciting us. We act along with that fire. The tragic thing is that unless we have stirred our lives so that the fire has touched every area, segments remained unburned. Those segments never had the opportunity to be caught up by this magnificent passion.
When this happens, sometimes we become forever changed by the fire. Other times, the burnt edges crumble away and the parts that did not catch fire live and consume our lives again.
There were many times in my life that I caught fire with a purpose, but it never stirred my whole being. When I finally did stir that passion, letting every area ignite with a fire of purpose, it was life changing. I believe this passion put me in a place to change the lives of others.
There is no greater purpose then to positively impact the life of others.
Keith Sampson
Executive Coordinator – God of Hope