Just before midnight in 1709, the Wesley family's rectory in Epworth caught fire.
Samuel Wesley counted his children in the freezing yard and came up one short. Five-year-old John was still upstairs, trapped above the flames. There was no time for a ladder. One neighbor climbed onto the shoulders of another, reached the window, and pulled the boy out just as the roof caved in.
His mother Susanna gathered her son and refused to call it luck. She named him with a phrase straight from the Bible. A brand plucked from the burning.
"Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?" Zechariah 3:2.
That little boy grew up to ride a quarter of a million miles on horseback, preach more than forty thousand sermons, and help ignite a revival that crossed an ocean. He was John Wesley.
You may have your own brush with the fire. An accident that nearly happened. An illness that turned. Look again. Psalm 138:8 says the Lord will perfect that which concerns me. The God who spared you did not do it by accident. You are still here because He is not finished with you yet.
Keep looking up,
Pastor Rodney
