I received the following story from a friend of mine. It’s a simple story, but one I think we can all learn from.
The only survivor of a shipwreck washed ashore on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed fervently for God to rescue him. Every day, he scanned the horizon for help, but none came.
Exhausted and alone, he eventually managed to build a small hut out of driftwood to protect himself from the elements and provide a place to store his few remaining possessions.
One day, after scavenging for food, he returned to find his little hut engulfed in flames, smoke billowing high into the sky.
He was devastated.
Everything he had left was gone.
Overcome with disbelief, grief and anger, he cried out, “God! How could you let this happen to me?”
Early the next morning, he was awakened by the sound of a ship approaching the island.
It had come to rescue him.
“How did you know I was here?” the weary man asked his rescuers.
“We saw your smoke signal,” they replied.
It’s easy to lose heart when life seems to be going terribly wrong. In the middle of pain, disappointment or loss, we see only what is burning. We see what we’ve lost, what didn’t go according to plan and what we cannot understand.
But sometimes, what looks like the end of something is making way for something we simply cannot see yet.
The man saw a burning hut.
The rescuers saw a smoke signal.
Perhaps that is the reminder in this little story: we don’t always have the vantage point to understand what God may be doing in the middle of our circumstances.
So, the next time it feels as though your little hut is burning to the ground, don’t lose heart. The smoke rising from what you thought was lost may be the very thing that leads you toward what comes next.
Sometimes grace arrives disguised as the very thing we thought would undo us.
And if someone you know feels as though their hut is burning today, remind them that the story isn’t over yet.
