By Joanie Lawrence-Cain
Eureka Christian and Congregational Church
One of the stories that I read during my study time a couple of weeks ago was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace.
I have read and heard teachings on this many times, but this time the part about them not having the ‘smell of fire on them’ when they came out of the fire stood out to me. What could that part of the story mean?
And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counsellors, being gathered together,
saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.
Daniel 3:27 KJV
Living in the country is good because we can burn. We may burn piles of unwanted sticks and discarded plants from the garden. We may burn pastures to get them ready for spring feeding. We may burn trash in a ‘burn barrel’. All these produce lots of smoke and there is no way to avoid having the smell of smoke linger on our clothes and in our hair no matter how hard we try to stay out of the drift of it.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were put in the fire because they would not bow down to the King. That was their punishment, a type of tribulation that they went through. But because of their obedience to God, they not only survived the fire without as much as their hair being singed, but they also did not smell like smoke.
All of us have tribulations we have gone through in our lives. Losing a loved one, illnesses, disasters, divorce, disputes, etc. We lived through those tribulations, but how did we come out of them? Did we allow the fire to consume us? Was our hair singed? Did we smell like smoke? How is our attitude after it all? What are the lingering effects? Are we bitter? Do we have unforgiveness? Are we mad at God? Do we have anger issues? Maybe addictions?
Fire refines gold. When we go through tribulations in our life, think of it as, ‘God is refining us’. We are being prepared for something bigger. Grow from them, learn from them, and become a better person because of them. Be like gold and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Don’t let the fire of tribulations and trials consume your life. Don’t let the smoke of negative outcomes linger with you.
God is in the fires with us, and He has protected us and cleansed us from the effects of the fires including the smell of smoke.