Smoldering is not a term we hear used much anymore.
Early one pre-dawn Saturday morning there was big commotion outside Seattle home in my normally you can hear a pin drop neighborhood. Fire trucks filled the street kitty corner to my house. I went outside to investigate only to see a home fully involved in flames. One of the occupants of that flaming inferno stood shivering on the curbside in the frigid nighttime air.
The bewildered young man explained that the he had awakened from his sleep and barely escaped with his life. You see the fire had already involved the house by the time it had reached his room. All he had left was his night clothes. Everything else was consumed in the flames.
I asked him to come into my home. I gave him a blanket and some warm woolen work socks. He refused my offer to stay and disappeared into the pre-dawn darkness. It turned out to be the fruitless efforts to save his house.
Later on I found out the cause of the fire. The night before the young men living there had a party. Unbeknownst to the home’s occupants one of their guests evidently had dropped an unextinguished cigarette in between the couch cushions where it lay smoldering for hours. After the guests were gone and the occupants were safely, they thought, ensconced in their beds, this hidden fire hazard was building up heat and doing its destructive work. All of a sudden, or so it appeared, the couch erupted into a flaming torch and the flames quickly spread to the rest of the wood frame house. The young men were able to jump out of a window to escape the flames.
What was interesting to me was this hazard was there when they went to bed. The thing they couldn’t see did hurt him. It devastated their lives. They were never able to rebuild and subsequently moved out of the neighborhood.
Sometimes we have smoldering issues in our lives. Bitterness can be a smoldering issue. It lies hidden in the folds of our minds. Every now and then we smell the smoke but can't determine from where its coming its been there so long. When anyone touches on this smoldering issue we can erupt in uncontrolled anger. Unforgiveness is like that. It can carve out a place for itself. Maybe some one disappointed us. We've made it a mission to make sure to not forgive the person. In fact I heard of two church members who would not speak to each other. When questioned, the one woman said its been so long ago that she had forgotten why she was angry. She just let this anger smolder for years. You see what she couldn't see or even remember was hurting her relationship with her one time friend.
I don't know about you, but I am going to investigate my life to see if there are any issues in the hidden folds of my mind and heart. I don't want to have some explosion to happen in my life to ruin a friendship or relationship. How about you?
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