Devocionales Matutinos

Making Tea

Today

Women · From the book Almost Home

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Verse:

When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. —Isaiah 43:2, NLT

Finally I felt like writing. I put water on to heat for blueberry tea and sat down at the computer. Since my husband’s death a few months before, I had not really wanted to be alone with my thoughts, so writing was not on the menu.

But today felt different. I sat in front of my desktop computer, and surprisingly the words began to flow. It was good to get them out.

Without my realizing it the water heating on the stove left my mind completely as I poured my heart into writing. By the time I remembered, it was far too late. With one look at the pan beginning to turn red, I knew it was just minutes away from bursting into flames. I frantically turned off the heat and should have stopped there—but no! I thought it would be a good idea to cool the pan in the sink, and I began to move it.

Now, this was a special pan specifically designed to heat more efficiently, and although made almost entirely of stainless steel, the bottom outside of the pan had a sunburst of aluminum inserts. By the time I had the pan hovering toward the sink, I realized with horror that liquid metal was falling from the pan onto the floor, creating small spurts of flames on the vinyl flooring. Panicked, I thrust the pan back toward the stove.

It was only later, after I had extinguished the small flames on my floor and stood surveying the damage, that horror and gratitude both surfaced at once.

What if that liquid aluminum had landed on my as-usual bare feet? And at the same moment, why had it not? The only explanation I can find came from the pattern I discovered on the damaged floor. When I examined it, I noticed the two semi-circle burn marks right where my feet had been—a heart-shaped safety margin of almost two inches around my feet. Maybe a woman lacking the sense to leave a fiery red pan on the stove had the composure to hold that pan at a safe distance from her feet, but, to me, an easier-to-imagine scenario is that God’s protection covered me at that moment.

And though there were many more trials to face after my husband’s death, which I might have had to deal with from a permanent seat in a wheelchair, the memory of God’s intervention in my kitchen on that morning stuck with me.

It burns brightly still—an assurance of His love for me.

Carolyn Huffstickler

Devotionals for Tuesday, October 20, 2026 ›