fire

Sometimes I run the risk of letting the faith of fire inside me burn down to only the point of embers.  That fire inside that God ignites in each of us, using his power and provision in our lives to let it blaze to the point of all-consuming.  

Sometimes in the seemingly dashed hopes of the not-yet, the approximately's, the not-quites, the where-do-I-start's, or the not-at-all’s, the heat of the fire begins to cool, leaving only a glow and hot ashes.

It's in these moments where the burning, hot faith is far-removed as the dew sets in our souls and we begin to feel the chill in the atmosphere and see our breath in the air.  We wrap ourselves up in jackets of self-pity or quilts of honest lamentations, putting our hands over the fire to try and pull out any bit of warmth left.  We rub our hands together frivolously, hoping the man-made friction will keep our fingertips from going numb.  

But we are not man-made and our self-sufficient efforts grow futile.  

And we get even colder.

We sit beside the fire and stare at the orange embers mixed in with the dark gray ashes and we wonder how on earth we let it get this cold and why the hot ashes have become our warmth instead of the all consuming fire. Somehow, we've grown content with only the ashes. The darkness sets in minute by minute and the fear of the cold and the coming night seems almost too difficult to bear.  The closest friends are the stars in the sky and the wind through the trees- they almost seem to close in as the heat slips through cold fingers and it’s then we realize...we’re all alone.

Where the fiery faith has gone, we’re not quite sure.  

The other night, I sat quietly and started at the flame of a candle burning and the word “abundance” came to mind.  In my minds-eye (because God knows I have a serious imagination!) I pictured a huge forest fire, blazing throughout the middle of nowhere- it was unstoppable, it was grand, and it captivated me.  

All I could hear was the cracking of the trees and the deep, steady rumbling of the fire.  All else was quiet.  

You know when you sit around a campfire and you just stare at the flaming light?  You zone out and focus in on the heat of it.  You don’t quite know what about it that makes you stare, but nonetheless its heat and brightness pulls you in and your eyes are locked in on it.  You can hardly pull away.  And if someone comes up behind you and says your name, you kind of snap out of it, as if you were somewhere else.  

That’s what this forest-fire in my mind did.  I smelt the smoke and trees and I felt the heat of the fire on my face.  I closed my eyes and pictured myself running beside it. It wasn’t a fire that scared me.  I had no desire to flee;  I wanted to follow wherever it led me.  All I could do was run and stare in a reverent awe at it’s abundant life as it swirled throughout the quiet forest.  “I want to be like that,” I thought to myself.  Abundant. Fiery hot in faith and passion for the glory of God.  I want to rip off the jackets of self-pity and the blankets of dashed hopes and raise the temperature in my soul to the boiling point of faith.  I want the sparks of my furnacing faith to ignite a dormant, ashes-ridden faith in another.  I want to softly breathe on the flickering spark amidst the dark, dead ashes that surround me.  I want to confidently trust that I, we, can become an all-consuming fire even when we find ourselves in the middle of cold nights.  It only takes one spark and perseverance; and before long, I’ll be running along side a blazing, abundant forest fire, igniting all it touches.

The fire builds the faith.  

And God never ends a story with ashes.