What does fire mean for you? Is it light? Warmth? Threat? Comfort? Power? Destruction? Apocalypse? Do you fear fire, or welcome it? And when Jesus says, “I came to bring fire upon the earth,” does it imply trouble or transformation?*
As a potter, fire is my friend. It is the end stage of turning clay into stone, transforming separately ground minerals into a smooth beautiful glaze. Firing a pot makes it useful for cooking and for storing water, one of the earliest signs of human ingenuity.
Fire also speaks to me of the Holy Spirit, transforming ordinary people into courageous witnesses, empowering us to see truth and act on it instead of waiting for someone else to make decisions or allocate funds. In the last 70 years, more than 50 ministries have started in Washington, DC, because someone at Church of the Saviour saw a need, and let that deepen into a call through prayer and confirmation by a partner or mission group. Some lasted only a short while. Others have become well-established non-profit organizations, no longer staffed by church members.
‘Judge for yourselves what is right,’ Jesus says. ‘When you notice signs of a storm, you know to prepare. Do the same in your spiritual life, because challenge and difficulty will come to all of us.’
Just as we learn to read signs of rain or wind coming, we can learn to read the signs of spiritual malaise and social dysfunction – and prepare ourselves by tending the fires of love and creativity. That means tending the fire of connection, the whole and not just particular parts. As the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
- Where do you feel the fire of change in your life?
- How can you fan the flame of transformation in your community?
—Marjory Zoet Bankson, Seekers Church
