Spark.
I have a lot of fears. I could list off of the top of my head a dozen. Heights, puking, and speaking to an audience are just a few. I suppose it is kind of random, but I recently discovered I am also terrified by fire.
I made this realization one evening as we were roasting marshmallows on sticks in the backyard. We had been given the most adorable pot to roast them in around Christmas. Once my brother had finally lit a small flame in the black charcoal, it was time to get the s'mores going. But as I held my marshmallow a foot above the tiny flame, I could see that nothing was happening and that nothing would if I did not move it a little closer. The thought was silly, it is a tiny flame, stop being ridiculous, roast your darn marshmallow. I had built many s'mores in my life and could recall camp outs and neighborhood gatherings where the roasting was the central part of the event. However, for the first time, standing bare-feet on the cold cement, I was struck by the thought that I really do not like fire. "Maybe I'll just eat my marshmallow as it is," I thought.
I headed inside to assemble the graham cracker and chocolate bar. Of course, my s'more looked disgusting with a regular marshmallow in the middle of it. I was being silly. What could a tiny flame do to me? I was determined to go back outside and roast my marshmallow the real way. Stick in hand, I headed back out. Two seconds later, I was screaming for help.
Maybe I just do not like fire because besides being scared of everything, I'm also the world's biggest klutz. Somehow I had managed to stick my marshmallow, not only close enough to the flame to roast it, but close enough to catch the marshmallow and the stick on fire. And, unlike what any average person would do, I held the stick just so the flames would crawl quickly to my hand. Luckily, my brother came to my rescue before any serious catastrophe occurred. But there was a second that I was convinced I was in the process of lighting myself or something else on fire.
Like so many things, I think my fear of fire comes from childhood experiences. I still carry with me memories of a neighbor's house being destroyed by flames and running several times from exploding fireworks that were landing a little too close for comfort. I think the thing that gets me about fire is the fact that it is really out of our control. No matter how tiny a flame is, it has the power rage. The tiniest spark can burn down a building or devastate a hillside. Once the fire is started, it is really out of our control.
The fact that the Holy Spirit is represented by this very imagine is beyond amazing. What is fire? Fire can be so many different things. Maybe it is warmth on a winter's day or a source of heat for cooking. Fire can be romantic burning at the tips of candles and frightening in the form of a blazing marshmallow or bellowing from a car that has just been in a crash. And fire burns until someone or something blows it out. What a beautiful image of all that the Holy Spirit encompasses?
Fire is uncontrollable. If you spark a flame, or strike a match, or light the charcoal, you can try to manipulate the flame but ultimately it goes where it wills. And once the flame is burning the fire has the potential to consume and overcome everything in it's path. What if we let the fire into our lives? What if we truly let the Holy Spirit be, not just that image, but that very thing? What if we let our hearts blaze?
The thing that scares me most about fire is, I do not know what it is going to do. I automatically assume it is going to burn through my clothes, fry my hair and ultimately destroy multiple layers of skin before I spend the rest of the night in the emergency room. And you never know, that could happen. But it is not likely. Now, I could live my life like that, and never get near fire again, because I could burn off an arm. Or I could go roast the marshmallow and hope for the best.
I think my life is just the same with the Holy Spirit. I start to fear the parts of me it will consume. I worry I will not like how it starts blazing if I get too close to the flame. Where will it take me? What will it cause me to do?
I think it is natural to have this fear of things that are, to some extent, so out of our control. But it is so hopeful in a way too. You set a fire and you just never can predict what it might do. What if we let the Holy Spirit truly set a fire in our hearts? It could be terrifying. It could take us places we never thought we would, or could, or wanted to go. We could end up doing some crazy things. But how beautiful, that a blaze that has the power to renew the earth, could start in our hearts? Imagine the glory you could bring to God if you let the Spirit spark in your heart a fire that is not only brilliant, and beautiful, and alive, but full of warmth and limitless in it's ability to burn.
I cannot control a fire anymore than I can control the Holy Spirit. And I am so glad, because even though at times it can be terrifying, you just never know what amazing dessert or life changing adventure awaits at the hands of just the tiniest spark.
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