Untended fires

by | Jan 7, 2021 | Beauty, Creation Theology, Encouragement, Friendships, God, Jesus Christ, Personal Growth, Prayer, Relationships, Wisdom | 2 comments

From a Christian perspective, I believe the primary fire we must never allow to die out is our relationship with God.

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Have you ever sat by a campfire on a cold winter night?

I’ve always enjoyed a good campfire, particularly on cold nights. I love the warmth, watching the flames release smoke like plumes of silk into the air. Fires bring warmth, light and stir something deep within my soul. There is a connection to our past. Before the smartphone, electricity and stove, there was the campfire. Man has been staring into flames for thousands of years – a campfire in some ways embodies a kind of essence of primordial humanity.

Every campfire eventually dies out if left untended and without fuel. On a cold night as the flames have ceased and embers are fading, darkness and cold encroach the once warm space. The faces of those sitting around the fire grow dark as the light fades and the chill in the air creeps through your neck and back as cold advances on the area once claimed by warmth and light. At this point, you have a choice… Let the fire die out or tend it to bring it back to full flame.

It takes discipline to leave the tent in the cold of winter to stoke the fire. But, the fire is what sustains our warmth and comfort. Tend it, stir it and care for it. A fire is either growing or dying out. At no moment does it remain static.

You and I can learn a lot from a campfire.

Because of the gift nature of creation, even a campfire has meaning and significance beyond itself. In other words, fire has an essence infused into its existence that is much fuller than its utility. I think thats why most people find enjoyment, wonder and contemplation beyond the light and warmth of a fire.

My good friend Dr. Doug Cecil once said in a seminary class, “Untended fires soon die out and become a pile of ashes.” Think about that statement for a moment. If you’ve been around a fire, you know its absolutely true. Fires die out without tending and fuel. To sustain a warm fire, it takes commitment and time. The flames must be stoked and renewed with fuel.

Now let’s apply this ‘untended fires’ idea to our relationship with God and others because I believe we can learn deeper truths about reality and relationships from a simple campfire. When our relationship with God is neglected, that relationship grows cold. The same goes for our relationships with others.

I have old friends I have not spoken with in 20 years. I don’t know where they are or how their lives have turned out. Why? Because with the passage of time the relationship has grown distant and cold due to a lack of attention and tending. Are these relationships a dead pile of ashes? Perhaps. But perhaps not. The only way to find out is to reach out to that old friend and see if there is a hidden ember beneath the ashes. Then, I can fuel that ember and possibly bring the fire back. Given, there are some fires that must be allowed to die out and become a pile of ashes. Those are unhealthy relationships. However, for the most part a good stoking and tending of an old friendship can bring light and warmth into our lives.

From a Christian perspective, I believe the primary fire we must never allow to die out is our relationship with God. By stoking and fueling my communion with my God and creator, I am able to stir a kind of eternal flame in the lives of others (potentially). For my fellow Christians, it will be the flames of fellowship, encouragement, exhortation, challenge, comfort, joy, rest, peace, love and following Christ. For those who do not know the love of God in Christ Jesus, it will be the flames that shed light on sin, awareness of darkness, cold and judgement but also the inviting warmth of God’s goodness, grace, forgiveness, rest, love and peace. Notice how the fire and warmth for both end up pointing to a loving relationship with God.

What fires need to be tended in your life?

Want to know God better?
Spend time with Him in His word – the Bible. By reading and meditating on scripture, you are renewing your mind and stoking the fire of your love and knowledge of Him. The more time you commit to fueling your relationship with the God who loves you and saved you from sin the more you will experience Him as a growing reality in your daily life. The result will be the deep enjoyment of rest, joy, love and peace regardless of how cold and dark the circumstances of life become.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

“I have set the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.” (Psalm 16:8)

Want to see God transform the lives of other people and the world?
Pray and intercede for others. Reading and meditating on God’s word reside also with prayer. If reading and meditation are the fuel, prayer is the oxygen required to bring the flames alive. Like warmth radiated by a fire, the result of prayer is the transformation in the world around you – particularly those standing close to your fire. Therefore, we tend fires through prayer.

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,” (1 Timothy 2:1)

Want to experience the fullness of Christ?
Serve Him by serving others and sharing your hope in Him. Nothing ignites or reignites a fire in ourselves and others like hope. One way to share the hope you have is through serving others. Meeting the needs of others and protecting the vulnerable take you further into the Kingdom of God and draw you closer to His heart. There is also a blessing in the action of ‘doing ministry’ (John 13:17). Serving others is where what we believe intersects with our will to act. The toil can be tiresome even painful at times but you will experience a fullness and deep joy through serving and sharing. So, we can tend fires through serving and sharing.

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” (John 13:17)

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

“Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.” (Proverbs 11:25)

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9)

My hope and prayer is that you and I will attend to our relationships with God, each other and folks around us. May we remember that untended fires soon die out and become a pile of ashes. You’ll never look at a campfire quite the same again. Perhaps, you’ll see your relationship with God and others in a different light as well.

(Comment and share your thoughts below)

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*This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of my employer or my church. The opinions of expressed by guest authors and commenters do not necessarily represent my opinions.

Ambling among the stars

by | Dec 9, 2020 | Beauty, Christianity, Creation Theology, God, Theology, Wisdom

Ambling Among the Stars

Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways…

Last weekend I spent two full days at the ranch.

My only company was Drake (our dog). It was beautiful and cold. And I was on my quest to bag one of those elusive bucks. One morning, I left the house for the deer blind two hours before sunrise. – the temperature was in the low 20’s. The sky was diaphanous and the moon was full, making her way westward. The gelid air was perfectly still. I had no need of artificial light as the celestial hosts were sufficient to illuminate my way.

A delicate dusting of ice crystals covered the landscape. The glittering frosty sheet under foot and all around shattered and reflected the bright full moon and stars above. The ground below appeared as the expanse of sky above. It was quite disorientating for a few moments as my perception of the beginning and end of earth and sky were thrown off in a dizzying display of tiny lights.

All was quiet – no breeze – no crickets – no birds or distant cows moaning. One could feel the stillness all around. The silence was only broken by my own heartbeat, my breath and the crunch of frost beneath my footsteps. I halted my progress to behold the beauty and stillness. A lone man, in a lone field, on a lone planet – under the vastness of the heavenly lights – encircled by exquisite crystals reflecting the exquisite night sky above, I stood breathless, in wonder.

In the quiet deepness of the moment bound among the delicate and the magnificent, God displayed His majesty. And I heard a still and quiet whisper, “Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways: And how small a whisper do we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?” (Job 26:14)

As I beheld God’s thundering power in frozen silence, I held a little Thanksgiving service in that field as I remembered who God is… In remembering Him, I was reminded who I am. To know Him is to see His glory in surprising ways.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

There is nothing mundane in God’s manifold creation. One of man’s biggest failures is his love affair with Modernity. Modernity is marked by mundane flattening of all of reality with an impingement of over-skepticism. Wonder is swept away as childish when modern man twists multi-faceted creation into a one-dimensional travesty of meaningless chance and matter.

Don’t confuse ‘child-like’ wonder and awe with ‘childish’ immaturity and selfishness.
To recapture child-like wonder is not at all childish. On the contrary, wonder actually allows the imagination to experience the inner consistency of reality. The gift-nature of creation always speaks and points to something beyond itself – to the Creator God who infused everything with meaning, purpose and goodness.

Read Genesis 1 and 2. Allow the truth of God’s great story to become a growing reality in your life as you play your role in the great story.

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What if you woke up one day and the sun didn’t rise?

by | Aug 20, 2020 | Beauty, Essays, God, Personal Growth, Theology, Wisdom, Worldview

What if you woke up one day and the sun didn’t rise?

I was looking out my window toward the east this morning.

I could scarcely see the first shades of deep purple with a hint of orange stretching across the expanse of the horizon. It is still. Not even a breeze stirs the leaves. The scene is both delicate and overpowering.

An interesting question entered my mind as a gazed upon the vista pictured above.

What if you woke up one day and the sun didn’t rise?

Think deeply about that question for a few moments.
What if one day, the sun just didn’t rise.
What would you think?
How would you react?

What if the day the sun didn’t rise began an unending night? It wouldn’t be long before a coldness would grip the earth.

If we’re honest, I think you and I would be deeply unsettled and struck with a fear we’ve never experienced before. What about hope? Could there be any hope without a rising sun?

God superintends with power over the sun. Each morning, He says, “again!” and the sun rises again. The next day, He says, “again!” So it is with God’s providence. And so it is with man’s ungratefulness. Man is but a mist. Our sojourn on this planet is but a hairsbreadth.

Every day we take for granted the rising sun, our beating hearts, eyes that see, hands that hold and others to love. We arise under the providential rising sun and go about our days ignoring the gift-nature of God (even for those who don’t believe in Him).

Every day that the sun rises, the heavenly event speaks to our hearts and minds. We can gaze upon it and ignore it or we can gain wisdom. Either way we will give an account one day when we’ve seen our last sunrise.

Tomorrow, set your alarm a little earlier and look toward the eastern horizon and ask yourself the question; “What if the sun doesn’t rise today?” When it does rise, you will filled with joy and gratitude – and the fear of the Lord will set your heart right.

Meditate on the following passages: 

“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day…” – Genesis 1:3-5

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” – Romans 1:20

“Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it…” – Isaiah 42:5

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A Simple Page of Paper

by | Aug 13, 2020 | Beauty, Essays, God, Spiritual Life, Wisdom

A Simple Page of Paper

The page on which I write was once a small seed that fell to the earth;

and God sent rain.
It grew in the soil and sprouted as a sprig above the ground;
He created nutrients in the rich dirt.
He sent winds and storms over the years to make the trunk strong;
and the tree grew mighty in the forest.
At the right age, the lumberjack laid an eye on the tree;
and the tree was felled.
It was milled by the hands of man,
It was pressed into pages and lined with ink;
and it was bound in cowhide.
This is the page of paper on which I write.

We tend to forget God’s common grace. We forget God’s magnificent gifts and blessings of this life bestowed on the good and the wicked. Consider the abundant blessings in the seemingly mundane – The air you breathe, the sweat on your brow, the water you drink, the sweet apple you eat, the seed, the sun, the rain, the tree and the paper. There is a gift nature to all that God has created because, in the beginning He said, “It is good.” All gifts from God are good. All good things come from His hand – because He is good. My meager gratefulness is no match for God’s goodness in the mundane.

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Why we need beauty

Why we need beauty

by | Apr 22, 2020 | Beauty, God, Personal Growth, Philosophy, Spiritual Life, Worldview | 6 comments

Do you ever wonder why humans need beauty?

“The acute experience of great beauty readily evokes a nameless yearning for something more than earth can offer. Elegant splendor reawakens our spirit’s aching need for the infinite, a hunger for more than matter can provide.” – Thomas Dubay

We’ve been in self-quarantine / lockdown for over a month. Each day I’m asking myself questions about what I’m learning. I’m looking for lessons, both big and small. Some days, I come up short and can’t seem to find the lesson.

This morning I was reflecting on some interesting aspects of my life. There are themes that seem to rise to the surface now and then. One of those themes is beauty.

The further down the path of life I wander, the more important beauty and wonder become. The more of the hurt and pain I see and experience in the world, the more I find myself searching for that which is beautiful. Beauty is a salve for the human soul.

When I was younger, I was an artist of sorts. From an early age, I had a keen interest in music and visual art. I started drawing and painting at a very young age, I got my first  drum set at 3 or 4 years old and my first tape recorder when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. I would listen to the radio and record my favorite songs. It wouldn’t be long (7th grade) before I would get my first turntables and mixer. My first DJ gig was at the end of 7th grade – a birthday party for a classmate. I have tinkered with various instruments my entire life. As an introvert and only child, I would sit in my room for hours drawing and building things both real and imagined.

I was a poor student in school, but I always excelled in art and writing. In fact, I was nearly headed to art school for college. I had my eyes set on Parson’s School of Design or Rhode Island School of Design. I had a great art instructor at my boarding school in Connecticut. Over 4 years, she showed me different ways to see the world. However, the rigid demands of creating a portfolio in Advanced Placement art class to submit to colleges proved to be too rigid. Add on top of that a growing interest in social activities and sports – and I walked away from ‘art school’ but not art or beauty.

Some of my fondest memories; are of exploring the woods around Avon Old Farms School (CT), wandering down to Bondi Beach (outside Sydney) to watch the surf, sitting on the top of a truck staring at the expanse of sky with friends at midnight in the middle of the Australian outback, relaxing on a balcony in Costa Rica with my wife watching birds circling in flight over the ocean and beholding a Texas sunset in the country with my family. These are just a few memories off the top of my mind. I have hundreds more.

Some of my best friends are extraordinary artists. To be able to see and hear the beautiful artifacts that emerge from them is a privilege and joy of the highest order.

A shift occurred

When I reflect back to why I loved beauty and art when I was younger vs. today, I learn that a major shift has taken place. When I was younger, I loved beauty and art mainly because it was an escape from reality. I wanted and needed to find a way out of the chaos and brokenness of my life. Beauty and art brought a kind of order and control. As I’ve gotten older and matured, I have learned that beauty is rooted in ultimate reality and an artist’s personality is the prism through which we see that reality. It is colored and shaped by the artist’s perceptions and expression outward.

So, why do we need beauty?

I have concluded that beauty points to an ultimate reality that remains thinly veiled in this life. From a Christian understanding, we live in a broken world that is slavishly chained to time. Everything, and I mean everything we see, hear and create will eventually decay or be destroyed. On the surface, this is kind of sad. But, if we consider ‘why’ beauty exists in the first place and ‘why’ we humans seem to need beauty – we begin to understand that the beauty we enjoy points to something else.

Beauty points to an ultimate reality and truth rooted in God’s character and expressed through his created order. Before the ‘fall’ of man into brokenness, God called His creation ‘good’. Since the fall, man has attempted to get back to that original state of goodness. Because we are all created in the image of God (Imago DeÍ), humans, like prisms reflect, refract and shape expressions of our creator’s beauty and goodness.

When we experience or express something beautiful, we’re getting a glimpse of an ultimate reality that is purely beautiful. We are seeing but shadows of that original ‘goodness’ cast onto the paths of this short life. When you see or hear something astoundingly beautiful, know that the reason why you love it and want it to last forever is because, beauty, goodness and truth are eternal. In this life, we merely perceive and enjoy dim glimpses of what was originally intended and what ultimately will come.

And so, if the world is slavish, harsh and cold, beauty is the warm inviting fire emanating a kindly light. We need beauty because, whether you believe it or not, beauty is a way that a good God reminds us that he love’s us.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart …” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

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