Behind The scenes

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 Disclaimer: This post is something completely outside my normal style of writing, but I feel like there is an important message at hand here…

               So, this morning just as any other Sunday, I got up and started getting the kids and myself ready just as always. The Sunday rut. Making sure everyone is dressed and presentable for church, everyone has breakfast etc. Get to church only to realize that my middle child has somewhere between home and church ditched his shoes and they are nowhere to be found…. Thank goodness we usually carry extras in the kid’s packets. Anyway, I get the kids checked into their children’s program and I head to the main sanctuary. I was fully prepared for the norm of the Sunday service: announcements, songs and then the message followed by maybe one closing song. Yet, today was different. Our Pastor was so eager to share the message we went straight into that.

Now, for those of my readers who don’t normally attend service or have different believes and are thinking you’re about to read a sermon, don’t exit out of this so fast, I promise I’m getting to my point.

As the message started, I knew the gist of what was going to be said, after all the years of growing up in church you can pretty much pinpoint where a service is going when the preacher calls out the passage of scripture. Today was different. While our pastor did an amazing job preaching about the three Hebrew men who were thrown into a fire for disobeying the king’s orders, I noticed something completely new about this scripture that I never has before.

 ^“And the satraps, administrators, governors, and the king’s counselors gathered together, and they saw these men on whose bodies the fire had no power; the hair of their head was not singed nor were their garments affected, and the smell of fire was not on them.” Daniel 3:27 NIV

               It was that end part of the verse, “the hair on their head was not singed, nor were their garments affected” that got me.

               How many time have we gone through life with a friend, co-worker and even a family member knowing them one way, but then once they REALLY open up to you there is always that thought of “ I would have never thought they went through all that.” Because of the way the just carried on with life. This thought to me was so liberating to know that even when I am going through my own fires in life, no matter what damage, scares and wounds I think may be visible, God is always there to 1) walk with me through the fire, just as He did with the men from the Bible passage. 2)provide healing and COMPLETE restoration to the point that it would seem I had never been through it, but would never forget it.

Because just as with this story, those men never forgot what God brought them through, but it was something personal they went through with God. Something that wasn’t there for everyone to see, but I assure you they remembered it forever.

I think these are the strongest times of learning and growing in life. The times where only God truly knows what is going on and where we really are. The biggest growth spurts in life happen in the fire, behind the scenes.