Tag Archives: Fire

Perpetual Embers

July 14, 2016 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar; it shall not go out.
Leviticus 6:13 (NRSV)

My family vacationed at the same place every year. Camp Idlewood on Rainy Lake in Minnesota was where we spent two weeks in early August every summer. There was a campfire pit just outside the boathouse and a fire was lit every night as families gathered around to swap stories, sing songs, and enjoy each other’s company.

As childhood gave way to the tween and teen years, we were allowed to stay later and later at the campfire. Eventually the parental unit would head to bed and we were allowed to hang out at the campfire until the wee hours of the night. Occasionally the wee hours gave way to dawn and we would still be there huddled around the fire pit.

I remember those nights watching the fire evolve from blazing bonfire to glowing embers. Still, we would stoke it and tend it and keep it going through the watches of the night as conversations continued, friendships were forged, and camp romances occasionally were sparked to life and then quickly went out.

I thought about that campfire as I read this morning of the ancient sacrificial fires prescribed by God through Moses. They kept going. Wood was added. The embers were stoked. The spiritual conversation and relationship continued around the fire.

This morning I’m reminded that my worship, my sacrifice, and my offering to God is not a compartmentalized act confined to a Sunday morning. It is a campfire in my spirit which does not go out. Every day, every stretch of the journey it blazes, it ebbs, and I tend to it; I stoke the embers into flame again and again. God and me perpetually around the fire through the watches of the night, into the wee hours, and on to the dawn.

Chapter-a-Day

Fire, Dross, Faith, and Joy

March 16, 2015 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

“Son of man, the people of Israel have become dross to me; all of them are the copper, tin, iron and lead left inside a furnace. They are but the dross of silver.” Ezekiel 22:18 (NIV)

In today’s chapter God uses the metaphor, or word picture, of dross to describe the ancient nation of Judah, the city of Jerusalem and the people (specifically the rulers and power brokers). So, this morning I’ve been doing a little internet search on metallurgy and learning about dross.

Dross is solid waste material made up of impurities and appears when you fire metal with intense heat into it’s molten, liquid form. The impure dross floats on top of the molten metal and, in the way it would have been dealt with in Ezekiel’s day, was skimmed off as waste.

The word picture is clear to those who had been following and listening to Ezekiel’s messages. The fire of God’s judgement would reveal the impurities in the rulers of Jerusalem, marked by corruption, idolatry, and moral failure. When the heat was turned up (the Babylonians were coming to lay siege to Jerusalem) the corrupt and impure leaders would be skimmed away like dross off of molten metal.

The thing I love about the metaphors God uses throughout His Message is that they are layered with meaning across time and space. Over 500 years later God would speak through Simon Peter in his letter to persecuted Jesus followers scattered across the land:

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Once again we find the fires of persecution blazing, this time in the form of the Roman persecution of anyone claiming to be a follower of Jesus. Instead of the fire revealing and skimming off the dross, the fires accomplish a different purpose. The fire refines and reveals the genuine gold, which is the faith of those who were willing to be thrown to the lions in the Roman Circus rather than recant their belief in Jesus.

Today, I am reminded that all of our lives are subject to times of suffering intense heat in circumstances that can run the gamut from judgement to persecution to tragic circumstances that defy reason. I have learned along life’s journey, however, that there is purpose in the pain. Suffering reveals things about our souls and our character. It separates the pure metal from the dross. For those who have faith to see, we find inexplicable joy amidst the suffering.

Chapter-a-Day

Elijah, the Spaghetti Western, and Me

October 27, 2014 Tom Vander Well 3 Comments

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of theLord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
1 Kings 19:11-12 (NIV)

Elijah is such an intriguing character. His personality seemed uniquely created to be the person God needed. He appears on the scene like Clint Eastwood‘s “man with no name” in Sergio Leone‘s spaghetti westerns. Out of the wild comes this charismatic loner displaying miraculous qualities and a passion for God. He seems invincible. Outnumbered 450 to 1, Elijah gets into a spiritual shoot-out with the prophets of Baal and, thanks to a heaven-sent fiery climax, he finds himself the last man standing. It’s the stuff of a Hollywood action blockbuster.

Then, the story takes an unexpected twist. The invincible hero does a complete 180 degree turn and becomes shockingly human. Fresh from the miraculous victory at Mount Carmel, Elijah learns that Queen Jezebel has put a price on his head and he withers on the vine. After three years of famine, scratching out an existence in the wilderness, and the big showdown on Carmel, God’s heroic prophet is physically, mentally, and spiritually shot. He shows the all too familiar human qualities of fear, anxiety, depression, despair, and suicide.

Elijah runs away. He gives up. He throws in the towel, lays down to die, and begs God to bring the end quickly. He then goes on a self-pitying pilgrimage to the mountain of God. Upon his arrival, there is a cyclonic wind, a great earthquake, and a raging fire. God was nowhere to be found in the cataclysmic manifestations.

God appears in a whisper, and asks His man a profoundly simple question: “What are you doing here?”

I find in this story of Elijah so much of my own frail humanity. I experience amazing, miraculous moments along the journey and then seem to forget them when petty anxieties paralyze me. I have episodes of victorious faith, then run from the next challenge. Given to blind, self-centric drama I fail to see all that God is doing in and through those around me while I project the weight of the world on my own shoulders, blow my own problems grossly out of proportion, and then slink into a corner to obsess and lick my petty emotional wounds.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And yet, I am strangely encouraged by Elijah’s story. I am no different than this hero of the faith. Human frailties are common to every spiritual hero, because every hero is limited by his or her own humanity. The question is not whether I will experience common human episodes of fear, anxiety, insecurity, despair, depression, self-pity, weakness, and conflict. We all experiences these things. The question is how I will respond when they happen. And, they will happen. Too often I pray for and expect God to send dramatic winds of change, a seismic shift in circumstance, or a explosive miracle to sweep away my humanity. I am beginning to learn that what I need to listen for is God’s still, small voice meeting me right where I am, in the midst of my all too human condition.

Chapter-a-Day

Trial by Fire

December 17, 2013 Tom Vander Well 8 Comments

You know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me, including Phygelus and Hermogenes.

May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. 2 Timothy 1:15-16 (NIV)

When Paul writes his second letter to his young protege, Timothy, he is in prison for the second time in Rome. The first imprisonment was five years earlier. Paul had used his Roman citizenship to appeal his arrest to Caesar and had been afforded a rather comfortable arrangement in which he was under house arrest in a rented house. He was released in 62 A.D. but was imprisoned again four years later. Now it was a completely different story. The political climate had radically changed.

Two years after Paul’s release from his House Arrest in Rome, the city of Rome was destroyed by the Great Fire of Rome. The city burned for days and countless people were dead. Ten of the fourteen Roman districts were destroyed. Many accused Emporer Nero of setting the fire himself in order to clear land for his palatial complex. Rumor spread that Nero himself played his lyre and performed on stage, unconcerned, while the city burned. His approval ratings plummeted, and he did what all politicians do when they don’t want to face up to their own failings: find someone to attack and deflect the blame. In Nero’s case, he blamed Christians. Roman historians say that Nero fed Christians to wild dogs and crucified others. He also had Christian dipped into oil, then burned alive to provide light for his garden at night.

When Paul was imprisoned in Rome once again in 66 A.D., Nero’s persecution of Christians was well underway. The fact that Paul was a Roman citizen no longer provided political protection. Paul was an outspoken follower and proponent of Jesus, and that trumped the clout of citizenship as Rome daily tried to rebuild itself out of the ashes. There would be no comfortable house arrest. This time, Paul was thrown into a deep Roman dungeon to rot and suffer.

Now read the verses above once more. Can you imagine why others were abandoning, Paul? He was a pariah. At best, anyone associated with Paul could likely face being thrown into the dungeon with Paul for being a fellow Christian. At worst, they could be put on the schedule to be a human candle in Nero’s garden. Paul is feeling lonely and abandoned. The only person who appeared willing to associate with Paul was Onesiphorus from Ephesus who sought Paul out in his dungeon on a trip to Rome.

I found it interesting that Paul refers to “shame” multiple times in today’s chapter. He encourages Timothy not to be ashamed of following Jesus. Paul is not ashamed of his chains or suffering for his faith in Jesus, but he obviously feels the shame and abandonment of those he considered friends but abandoned him. He’s thankful that Onesiphorus was not ashamed of associating with him.

Today, I’m thinking about the relative ease with which I can be a follower of Jesus. Yes, there are times of being unfairly labeled, misunderstood, and politically skewered. But seriously, some of that is the direct result of the foolish and misguided words, attitudes and actions of Christians themselves. I can easily forgive that and I’m not really suffering in any tangible way. When your life is on the line, it is a true test of what you really believe. What would I be willing to suffer and die for? Would I have been Hermogenes keeping a comfortable distance, or would I have been Onesiphorus throwing caution to the wind to visit and show a little love to Paul?

I’d like to boast that I would be Onesiphorus, but in my heart I know that I have never been tested like that. My honest answer: I pray I would not be ashamed like Paul and Onesiphorus, but I confess that until my very life is on the line, I’m not sure I can say with certainty. I enter my day grateful to live in peace and freedom with blessing beyond measure.

On a Mission From God (tomvanderwell.wordpress.com)
Untold Stories: Onesiphorus – The Refreshing Gift of Friendship (momsfirstscreenn.wordpress.com)
Nero: Poet, Hedonist and Sadist (artlark.org)
Where Can We Find a Breath of Fresh Air? (kevin358.wordpress.com)
No Shame, No Guilt (thebeggardanced.com)

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day 1 Kings 18

January 29, 2010 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

Then Elijah told the people, "Enough of that—it's my turn. Gather around." And they gathered. He then put the altar back together for by now it was in ruins. 1 Kings 18:30 (MSG)