Last summer, a fire devastated the landscape along the Sterling Highway. Smoke filled the skies on the Kenai peninsula, and at times, surrounded my house in Anchorage. The smoky smell was inescapable; whiffs of smoke filtered through the closed windows into my home and assaulted my lungs. It was heartbreaking to see the skeletons of burned trees, some still standing, others lying broken and destroyed on the ground; the beauty of the Alaskan hillside reduced to ashes.

One year later, in July, my husband and I drove through the same area. The blackened remains of trees still covered the hills and mountains. Then my gaze turned from the burned trees to the brilliant pink flowers blanketing the landscape. Fireweed, the first colonizer after a fire, blazed across the hillside.

In an earlier blog post, I explained the story behind the naming of fireweed. Fireweed requires disturbance to grow. After a fire, it brings healing and transformation to the scarred landscape. It is the first sign of life to rise from the ashes.

Beauty from ashes.

Since the beginning of 2020, the wildfire of COVID-19 and political unrest has scarred our nation and the world. It feels like everything is out-of-control, and our lives are in ashes.

But then, I pause and consider how the fireweed plant drops seeds upon the earth at the end of each summer. Seeds that lie beneath the ground, waiting for the fire of disturbance to blaze across the land. And then, hope is reborn as those seeds turn ashes into beauty.

As I reflect,  I wonder how faithful I have been to sow the gospel’s seeds in my sphere of influence. Have I taken the time to share Jesus with others, to plant a seed of hope in each person I meet? Have I planted seeds of kindness, love, joy, and beauty in hearts heavy with mourning, a spirit of heaviness, or a heart burned to ash? Too often, I’ve failed.

“Our world today so desperately hungers for hope, yet uncounted people have almost given up. There is despair and hopelessness on every hand. Let us be faithful in proclaiming the hope that is in Jesus.”

-Billy Graham

In this time of disruption in our daily lives, we need to lift our eyes above our circumstances and reach out to plant seeds of hope in the people around us. We may not be around to see those seeds bloom in the scarred hearts where they were planted. Still, we can rest in the fact that God offers salvation that can change a heart of ash into a crown of beauty, a mourning spirit into joy, and despair into praise.

Remember the fireweed.

Hope reborn.