Light Your Fuse!

      
     As we in the United States celebrated our Independence Day this past week, firecrackers, bottle rockets, and a wide assortment of pyrotechnic offerings scattered across the night sky for several nights before and even a few nights after the actual July 4th event. Loud bangs, zooming whistles, and colorful displays of sparkling lights filled each night as nearby spectators oohed and awed almost breaking their necks as they gazed upward for the pyro performance that was taking place. Our family descended on my sister and brother-in-law’s home where an outstanding show took place. As the evening sun began to drop down below the horizon the 4th of July celebration crew started moving their cache of explosives into place. Roman candles, sparklers, firecrackers, and snap and pops precluded the assorted square boxes, rectangular sheets, and tubular devices which housed the main attraction for the evening's show. While my attention was fixed strictly on the show, my thoughts did wander away momentarily, just long enough for me to come up with this week's Flat Tire Thought.
     When we look at any type of firework packaging it becomes obvious very quickly that what lies inside the box has the potential to get our attention. Warnings on the outside labels alert us to the fact that what lies inside is explosive and in most cases directions are given about how to proceed with safely igniting the device. Colorful labels showing the floral displays, or pictures of soldiers, eagles, and myriad other images cover the boxes in hopes of prompting us to purchase that particular piece for our own personal celebration. All of that is great, but what lies inside the box or device is limited in what it can offer until someone lights the fuse.
     The definition of a fuse is the part of the device that initiates the function of burning or lighting. In other words, without the lighting of the fuse the device just sits there. The most beautiful display is basically trapped inside the cylinder of its casing until someone lights the fuse. Without the spark the fuse doesn't get lit, and the show doesn't take place. In other words, the potential of the energy force inside the box, the beauty of what the device was created for, will not be realized unless someone or something lights the fuse. 
     My friends, you and I are just like that box of gunpowder and other explosive components. Each of us was created with a tremendous amount of potential energy. After you were born, life experiences, educational endeavors, and life lessons learned along the way have been poured into your body and mind. You have trained, worked, played, studied, and experienced things in your lifetime that have become a part of your preparation for your purpose in life. You have laughed, cried, been scared to death, and experienced joy to the point that you actually did think you would explode! Some of us have endured excruciating pain mentally, physically, and in some instances, both. What you have to realize and embrace is that all of those experiences have been poured into your life much in the same way as the gunpowder and explosives were into the fireworks package sitting on the shelf of the vendor's store. You have to realize that all of those events in your life, all of those emotions you have endured, conquered, or embraced have created your potential to make an impact on the world you live today. The only problem is that many of us are sitting on that potential, each of us has something explosively beautiful and impactful on the inside of our very being just waiting to burst out! 
     Point blank, you have potential energy that you have not tapped. "You were created on purpose, with a purpose" is a quote I heard Pastor Ray Sweet from First Christian Church proclaim. What has been poured into your life may not have all been happy and positive experiences, possibly you may have experienced so many bad and terrible things in your life that all you can think is that you don't want to see anyone go through what you have experienced in your life. But maybe, just maybe those experiences were training you to help a multitude of young people who have been dealt a similar hand and need someone to encourage them to fight the fight and continue moving forward. What if the potential you have on the inside could change the lives of women or men around the world, but as long as you keep it boxed up inside nothing is going to happen. You have to light the fuse, you have to set the beauty and power of what you have free, but nothing will happen if you never light that fuse and set the stage for your own explosion of giving and sharing. 
     Paul, in writing to the church at Phillipe encouraged the followers there with this statement: 
"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life." Philippians 2:12-16. If you embrace what has been poured into you, if you take all of the experiences and events both good and not so good that have occurred in your life and use them to benefit the well-being of others for Christ's sake, according to Paul, you will shine in the night just like the stars, sounds like fireworks to me how about you? Ignite your potential to help others, share, give, teach, coach, comfort, exhort, or just be there for someone that needs you! God doesn't make mistakes and God can use you to make something beautiful for all to see and enjoy! What are you waiting for? Light your fuse today!


Coach Carter