“Here are the beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.” ~ CS Lewis commenting on the Lord of the Rings.

In the Boy Scouts we would go on monthly campouts. This would mean huge bonfires and late night games, but one trip was in January and temperature was dropping. That evening we made a monster fire just to keep warm. It was literally four or five feet square and stacked up high. But as the clock approached two we could not stay up any longer so we went to our tents. Inside we changed into new clothes and got into our sleeping bags, but the temperature continued to drop until it was below zero (with the wind-chill even lower). Needless to say my tiny twelve year old body-even so tightly wrapped-could not keep warm. So in the early morning I got up to restart the fire. We had left the huge blaze only hours before, so the buried coal should still be glowing and starting it again would be easy (randomly, the fact that we rarely completely put our fires out had to enrage Smokey the Bear!). But the ashes were completely cold! Which meant I would need small twigs to get a fire started. Since it was still dark I took off my gloves to rummage through a bag and find my friends steal Mag light. Right when my hand grasped the cold metal I felt intense pain. It was then that CS Lewis’ qoute, “burn like cold iron”, made sense.

   Many of you have no idea what I am talking about, the idea that cold could burn. But we can not know something or someone until we have the experience. You can not know the Father until you have experienced following the Son!