Burning of the Pines

We were driving through the Pine Reserves in the Maya mountains – this Reserve was once filled with acres of beautiful strong pine trees. In the midst of rainforest mountains, a wild piece of land grew with thousands of pines. Their strong backs in rows across the land.

The trees were plagued with black beetles and the entire reserve was almost lost. The only way to save it was to set fire to the trees. The fire, which stripped them of all of their glory, was actually their savior. The forest burned with brilliance only leaving small remnants of what resembles a tree. It no longer draws tourist in, the ash is all they see. But if you look close you would find deep under the burned bark, sap remains. Life is still beating deep in the roots.

The irony is chilling as I am looking for myself in this forest. Trying to find if I am still standing, if he is still standing? The disease was too deep, it had spread too far – we couldn’t catch it, all would have been lost. He dropped the match and walked away.

I wonder if God saw the light from up there? I wonder if He notices when we are burned up, if He too stops and stares? Seems our God is too wild for me. Only He would allow beauty and disaster to share the same scene. The fires take everything. Little is left.

I stare at the trees covered in ash, stare at my future and back at my past. Which one more beautiful, who is to say? Is it brilliance of glory that I am burned up by His mercy…and I am left to discover that their is beauty in what someone else said is an ugly, burned pine tree.

In a few years I will return to this forest - I will dance in its radiance, in the re-growth and the glory.