The first thing I did this morning as my coffee brewed was build a fire in the fireplace. Granted it's 61 degrees out, so I opened a window. But, I love the atmosphere a fire creates. It's calm, real, beautiful. As I sat with my cup of coffee and watched the beauty of the flames, listened to the crackling sound it makes and feeling the warmth, I began thinking about how amazing fire is. In a fireplace it is "tamed". We enjoy its beauty, its warmth and the calm it creates.
But when fire is unleashed in the wild, it can be profoundly desctructive. Its power is awesome and can destroy acres and acres of land, homes and even cities. Fire is a powerful force that though it is truly beautiful in its controled environment can be very dangerous when out of control.
Then I began thinking of one of my favorite animals, the bald eagle. I love the eagle I guess mainly because of a teaching I heard a few years back by Joyce Meyer concerning eagles and how they are often used in scripture as comparisons to us in our walk with God. They are beautiful, majestic birds. They spend hours every day preening (that's grooming for us humans) and caring for themselves. They only eat fresh meat. Plucked often from the waters and still fighting.
But, if an eagle is taken into captivity, it no longer cares about eating only fresh meat. Its preening is not as important...it doesn't care. I remember seeing a beautiful bald eagle at the zoo a couple summers ago. The cage it was in, while relatively big, was obviously restricted for such an awesome bird. It just sat on a branch of a small tree that was in the cage and stared. There was no spark in its eyes, it was kind of dumpy looking...it broke my heart. I didn't need to see an eagle that badly that it had to be caged like that. All its power, all its beauty lost in a cage.
Then I thought about God. How often we tame Him. Much like the fire in the fireplace, we are warmed by Him, we are in awe of His beauty and we like the atmosphere He creates. But, much like the eagle, that is not where God is meant to be. While the fire when unleashed is a powerful and often destructive force, God when "unleashed" in our lives is a powerful but productive force. We often put God in our own little box and make Him what we want Him to be but God is more than we can begin to imagine. He is not to be tamed. He is to be worshipped and magnified as the powerful, majestic God that He is.
Let God unleash His power in your life...you will not be the same.
