On my first overnight with a Scout troop several years ago, we went to a piece of property owned by one of the families. After setting up camp, we scouted the area out, deciding it would make a marvelous place to play capture the flag. Our host, before leaving us, pulled me and the other adults aside and gestured over toward the south edge of his pasture.
“See that big brush pile over there?” he asked.
We nodded. You couldn’t hardly miss the big brush pile. It could have been called a brush mountain without exaggeration. The thing stretched a good sixty feet long and rose probably twenty feet into the air. I’m baffled as to how such a pile might have been formed without heavier machinery than you’re likely to find on a twenty-acre hobby farm.
“I was kind of hoping you guys could burn that for me,” our host explained. “I’d do it, but I never have the time to stick around and wait for it to burn down. If you were to light it some time this afternoon, it’d probably be done burning by the time you went to bed.”
Count me in as one of the more gullible people on earth. I heard the assignment and couldn’t see a single drawback to it. A bonfire! What could be more fun for a bunch of Boy Scouts? We readily accepted the task and watched the landowner head for his truck.
A fire in the afternoon would be fine, but it would be a whole lot more interesting come sundown, so we waited. As night overtook us, we gathered the whole troop around the brush pile and set the thing ablaze. For a minute or so, we simply stood there watching as the flames spread from one little spot to the whole pile. Then we took a few steps back as the fire leaped ever higher and hotter into the black night. Then we took a few more steps back. Before long, we’d been driven back a good fifty feet from the fire.
Before long, the boys grew bored with the inferno. The adults, however, realized that we’d uncorked a real potential for problems. What if the flames managed to spread into the nearby forest? What sort of trouble might we be in for? We took turns watching the fire, although we realized that there was nothing much we could do if the fire did start to spread. Happily, it never did. In the morning, a very hot, very large bed of coals remained on the edge of the pasture. When our host arrived, we left him in charge of the remains of the blaze.
Fire, I’ve since learned, is not something to play with or take lightly. Left untended for a moment, it can burst out of its bounds and bring havoc. It’s no wonder that Isaiah today likens sin to a fire. Sin can spread and reproduce itself, spawning disaster upon disaster, feeding on anything in its path. Sin is not something with which sensible people play. The question then is whether we are sensible people.
Tune My Heart is primarily an aid to the devotional life of its author, Mark Browning, who holds the copyright for this material. It is provided online in hopes that some will find it edifying. All contents, unless otherwise noted, may be redistributed freely provided that you give credit for its origin and do not charge anything.