Dried Tinder Set Alight

Yesterday, my daughter and I were at a rehab facility visiting a friend. As we were leaving, I noticed a cluster of women in wheelchairs. Their bodies were battered and beaten, hunkered inside of themselves so it was hard to distinguish even a little bit of flame within them.

But God sent me a quick flash of what these women were as girls–wide-eyed and open to the world around them, like my daughter walking next to me. Blue-eyed and blonde and ready to take on the same world that beat these women down.

I know now, after forty years of trying to subdue my flesh, my own shell, that it’s not the outside that lives fiercely against a world willing to break it. It’s the inside, our dried tinder set alight with God’s breath, His Spirit, that keeps us resilient even when our bodies, our minds, refuse the same course.

“People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7