Ashes to Artisan: Creative Chronicles V The Fire Does Not Remember Yesterday

 I have to admit something honestly.

There have been days when I approached the grill carrying more than just charcoal and meat. Some mornings I arrived beside the fire already weighed down with anxiety and insecurity, replaying cooks from days before that had gone completely wrong. Temperatures that refused to stabilize, meat that dried out, smoke that behaved badly — the kinds of mistakes every pitmaster eventually faces.

In those moments it is easy to let yesterday follow you into today.

The mind has a way of doing that. It remembers the frustration, the small failures, the feeling that perhaps you should have known better. Standing beside the grill again, those memories can quietly whisper that today will turn out the same way.

And for a time, I let those thoughts shape the way I approached the fire.

I would lift the lid too often, second-guessing myself. I would adjust vents nervously, trying to force the temperature into place instead of letting the fire settle naturally. Instead of listening to the rhythm of the cook, I was reacting to the echoes of yesterday’s mistakes.

But somewhere along the way I realized something simple that changed the way I approached the grill.

The fire does not remember yesterday.

When you light fresh charcoal, the fire begins again. It does not carry memory of the cook that failed the day before. It does not hold frustration or disappointment. It simply responds to the conditions of the moment — the air, the fuel, the patience of the person tending it.

Every fire begins as a clean conversation.

Watching the coals catch again, I began to understand something deeper. The anxiety I carried beside the grill was not coming from the fire itself. It was coming from my own mind replaying old mistakes.

But the fire was already teaching me something different.

It was teaching me that every cook is a new beginning.

Yesterday’s temperature swings do not dictate today’s fire. Yesterday’s mistakes do not determine how the smoke will move through the chamber today. The fire only asks for attention, patience, and presence in the moment.

And slowly I began to change the way I approached the grill.

Before each cook I started reminding myself of a simple truth: today is a new fire. Yesterday’s disastrous cooks and mistakes do not get to dictate today’s cook. What matters is the fire in front of me now.

Strangely enough, that lesson began to reach far beyond barbecue.

Life has a way of carrying yesterday’s failures forward if we allow it. Old mistakes, old regrets, old fears — they can quietly follow us into new days and convince us that nothing has truly changed.

But standing beside the grill taught me something important.

Just as the fire does not remember yesterday, grace invites us to begin again.

And in many ways it reflects my own walk with Jesus. Again and again I have seen that He is patient and long-suffering with me. Where I often replay my past failures, He invites me to step forward into a new day with Him. The patience of the fire has often reminded me of that quiet truth — that growth rarely happens instantly, and that grace often works slowly, one moment at a time.

The coals glow fresh every time they are lit. The smoke rises new with every cook. The fire simply asks that we show up again, patient and willing to learn.

And perhaps that is one of the quiet gifts of tending a fire.

Every time the coals are lit, we are given another chance to begin again beside the flame.