WHEN the SMOKE CLEARS and the FLOODS RECEDE!

Ronald Bainbridge
May 6, 2024
6 min read

Updated: Jan 13

Friends, the purpose of Discovering A BETTER LIFE MINISTRIES, is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as we provide men and women with words of Encouragement and Hope, as well as empower believers in Jesus Christ around the world, to recognize, experience, and celebrate their oneness with all others who know Jesus as Saviour and Lord, regardless of denomination, church fellowship, or historic tradition.

(Stories of Real People, Real Events, Real Places)

Because they provide

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To Encourage Men and Women to find PEACE and HOPE

By entering a transformational relationship

with Jesus Christ!

(John 10:10; 14:1-6; Galatians 3:26-29)

Discover Hope In Relationship With Jesus!

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Today’s Message

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Discovering A BETTER LIFE MINISTRIES

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WHEN the SMOKE CLEARS

and the FLOODS RECEDE!

Friends, in all seriousness, Australia often endures extreme weather conditions, such as bushfires, floods, droughts, and cyclones.

Each year, Australia is a nation that experiences Catastrophic Fires and Devastating Floods! However, we can always hope for better days ahead!

Things can look so bleak and dismal when you are in the middle of a crisis, such as, the COVID-19 pandemic, FLOODING HOMES, CATASTROPHIC FIRES, the WARS in Europe, Gaza, and other world countries, a family feud, a company facing bankruptcy, The uncertain Stock Exchange, in a depressed state of mind, or your health diagnosis is terminal, or you have just been made redundant from a job you love, and face no prospect of finding other employment.

You name it, the list could go on and on, and the result, all too often, is great anxiety and fear!

Unfortunately, some people give up too soon - with victory just over the horizon! While others give way to despair, even when God is calling them to hope! Such people forget that what sometimes looks like defeat to us is an opportunity for the Almighty God to work His amazing Grace in our lives.

Allow me to provide an example for you:

The devastation caused by massive fires, storms, and floods in Australia during the past few years has become international news. And deservedly so!

Almost every state, and millions of hectares of rain-starved land, have been ravaged by fast-moving fires. Even during the first month of this year, 2026, fires and floods are ravaging Australia! Hundreds of thousands of hectares have been destroyed, Many homes have been burnt to the ground, hundreds of people have been made homeless, and lives have been lost.

Even as I write this article, Catastrophic Fires are raging in the State of Victoria, destroying land, homes, animals, and wildlife!

The words used by our environmentalists and news reporters include “devastating,” “catastrophic,” and “horrendous.”

However, when springtime comes, some of the burnt-out areas will show amazing resilience. While there have been very real losses, and although some of the most heavily burned timberlands will take generations to heal fully, the consensus of the experts is that what happened will generate unforeseen benefits. These benefits, by the way, are not making the headlines that the destructive fires are receiving.

The fires, as devastating as they have been, will have cleaned out huge amounts of dead and small-growth plants, which will be recycled as nutrients into the soil, and certain animal species will have more habitat area available to them.

No! The fires and floods that have ravaged Australia in recent years are not good news! But amazingly, within weeks of these devastating fires, we will also be able to see green sprouts rising from the charred stumps. And we can be sure that, come springtime, there will be new life, poking through blackened earth everywhere!

Arsonists certainly didn’t do anyone a favour with their evil deeds. And the people who have lost loved ones, or homes, businesses, pastureland, or stock, on account of them can take scant comfort from what has happened, or will eventually happen, as the scorched earth transforms itself.

However, the point I’d like to make today is that those grim situations I have referred to often have positive by-products we didn’t see, while holding on for dear life through some ordeal.

Friend, hope sees heaven through the thickest clouds. Because, when the smoke clears, it’s still there! You see, in forests and people, burned-over places allow new growth to occur.

Friend, the message of hope that Christians can proclaim right now stands in stark contrast to what some broadcast media have given airtime to in the context of the bushfire tragedy, namely, the voice of the ‘global warming’ bandwagon.

Do they have a case? Might there be a link between Australia’s current droughts, floods, bushfires, and modern-day carbon emissions?

For what it’s worth, I ask you to consider the iconic poem by Dorothea Mackellar, which she wrote in 1904. It is a graphic reminder that nothing much has changed, as far as our climate is concerned, during the past 122 years!

“My Country”

“The love of field and coppice, of green and shaded lanes, Of ordered woods and gardens is running in your veins. Strong love of grey-blue distance, brown streams, and soft, dim skies know but cannot share it, my love, is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, ragged mountain ranges, droughts, and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel sea, Her beauty and her terror wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests, all tragic to the moon, The sapphire-misted mountains, the hot gold hush of noon, the Green tangle of the brushes where lithe lianas coil And orchids deck the tree-tops, and ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky, When sick at heart, around us, we see the cattle die then the grey clouds gather, and we can bless again drumming of an army, the steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country! Land of the rainbow gold, For flood and fire and famine she pays us back threefold. Over the thirsty paddocks, watch, after many days, The filmy veil of greenness that thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country, a willful, lavish land you who have not loved her, you will not understand though earth holds many splendours, wherever I may die, I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly.”

Seven years after Dorothea MacKellar wrote "My Country," Henry Lawson, another great Australian Poet ,wrote along similar lines, when he shared the following Poem, "A BUSH FIRE."

Friend, perhaps after reading today's message, you’d like some help in overcoming whatever anxiety, fear, insecurity, or grim situations you may be facing in your personal life. If so, we believe we can help you by providing you with three FREE booklets, titled: