Grateful Of Ashes

The grate is the metal framework at the bottom of the fireplace that holds the fire. As the fire burns down, the grate fills up with ashes. You could say that after a fire, you are left with a grateful of ashes. When all our hopes and dreams, when all that we love and care about is burning down around us, gratitude is perhaps the very last thing on our mind. When the fire has died down and gone cold, when the last of the embers has gone out and the last of the coals has crumbled, all that we have left is a grateful of ashes. So what? We may ask. Ashes can be turned into soap. They can be used in ceramic glazes. They can even help fertilize soil. The Lord has promised to those that mourn "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified." (Isaiah 61:3). We may think that after we have passed through the refiner's fire that all of the dross and impurities in our lives that have melted and burned away served no purpose and we would have been better off without them. We may think that after we have sacrificed and given up the lesser things that neither God nor we have any further use for them. We are wrong. God commanded His people to offer up burnt offerings because through the fire they were made holy. Our offerings are transformed into ashes that cleanse us. They are transformed into ashes that adorn us with the garment of praise just like ceramic glazes adorn pottery. They are transformed into ashes that fertilize the soil of our hearts that we may grow and flourish as trees of righteousness, the plantings of the Lord. It may seem small comfort when we are staring at the grateful of ashes, but it is and it ought to be a big comfort to know that Christ will take our sacrifices, our broken hearts and our broken promises, our mistakes and our missed opportunities, our lost hopes and our lost causes, and He will transform them for our good into cleansing, beautifying, and nourishing. The world can take our families and our freedoms and our health and our sanity, it can burn down every good thing in our life, and, for that matter, every bad thing too, but it can't take away our grate, nor its ashes. We can choose to let everything burn out in the open, beyond our control, and let the ashes scatter with the wind. Or, if burn they must, we can lay them willingly upon the grate so that at least we may hold onto the ashes when everything else is gone. When our whole hearts have been scraped all the way to the bottom, then all we have left is to give thanks from the bottom of our hearts. We can't see it yet, but in the hands of the Lord those gray and white flakes of ash have a power we can't even comprehend. The Lord will give us cleansing and beauty and life in place of the ashes we have collected. If in the very depths of our sorrow we can find nothing, utterly nothing for which to be grateful, then we can still choose to look with hope and trust in the Lord's promises toward our grateful of ashes.