Jeff Adams

“Dad, you smell like smoke!” said my grand daughter to her father.

David, my son-in-law, had just come in from the grill, having put the finishing touches on some chicken breasts. A close sniff revealed that not only did his clothes reflect the smell of the grill, they also carried remnants of having spent his workday in the presence of some smokers.

It doesn’t take much to smell like smoke, does it? When I spend time in certain restaurants or other environments, I know that my clothes will carry the evidence of where I have been until they are cleaned.

I was sitting at my desk early this morning putting the thoughts of my sermon into mind one last time as LeeAnn walked in to deliver my microphone. This is a ritual for her or whoever is on duty any given Sunday morning, allowing me time to put on and adjust my wireless microphone before heading out to the service.

As LeeAnn was walking out the door, she suddenly turned around and said, “You know, I was reading Daniel 3 the other day and saw something I had never noticed before.”

“Yeah? What was that?” I asked.

She reminded me of how Daniel’s three friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had been thrown into the fiery furnace. Something had to be powerful enough about their deliverance from that super-heated fire to have resulted in the conversion of the most powerful man in the world at that time, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

When the king peered into the furnace he saw the three Hebrews still alive. Not only did the fire not singe a hair on their heads or burn their clothes, when they came out, they didn’t even smell like smoke.

LeeAnn said that what must have impressed the king was not just the fact that they made it through the fiery trial, but that they did not even have the smell of smoke!That would surely be an act of God!

We all go through trials, believers and non-believers. No one is particularly impressed with the fact that we have gone through a trial, but rather with the way in which we gone through it. When we endure a fiery trial and come out smokeless and full of joy, that is something that demands attention and close inspection.

I thought that was a good way to start my day and also that it was worth passing on to you.