Learning to Tend the Fire

- honouring the Holy Spirit

Last week, my husband and I spent 4 days at a friend’s cottage in the Gulf Islands. These are the little islands between Vancouver Island and Vancouver. They are a perfect example of Westcoast life, rocky beaches, glorious ocean views, forests, hemlocks, arbutus, cedars, and all kinds of wildlife from eagles to otters and orcas. Incredibly peaceful and picturesque. Their cottage is built on the edge of a rocky bluff overlooking a handful of windswept fir trees and the ocean about 20 feet below, an amazing place to unwind, read, talk, and pray.

The primary source of heat is the wood-burning stove, one of those airtight versions with a glass door so you can watch the fire. Have you ever stared at a fire? We all do it; in the winter, a fireplace; in the summer a campfire. It’s a place to gather, to talk, to sing, to pray, or just to be quiet. The fire gives you an excuse to be together without even needing to talk. The ocean’s like that too. You can sit and watch waves for hours and not feel like you’ve wasted time. My husband says sitting lakeside is like that as well, recollecting his childhood in Ontario. I’ll have to take his word for it; I’ve always been a Westcoast girl.

But back to the fire.

As I laid the big log, the paper, the kindling, all in a way so that it could catch and burn, I felt the Lord was showing me that there was a lesson for us in the fire. Jesus likes to teach us in parables; these tangible, earthy illustrations make spiritual realities easier to grasp and retain.

The fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it; it shall not go out. The priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and he shall arrange the burnt offering on it and shall burn on it the fat of the peace offerings. Liv 6:12

PREPARING FOR THE PARABLE

I was well prepared to listen to the Lord on the parable of the fire because I had been seeking Him for understanding for how to get better at honouring the Holy Spirit’s activity in our church services, beyond just continuously repeating, “Come, Holy Spirit!”. What draws the Spirit, what makes space for the Spirit to move, what builds on that moment when He is moving, so that you end up with a deeper encounter, not just an emotional high? What is our part, and what must we be careful not to touch?

Also in preparation, about a month ago, I had a coffee with a worship leader who helped me understand the principle of letting a song breathe. What he meant was giving enough time for the lyrics of a song to become a reflection and then, from there, become a heartfelt expression of worship from the congregation, rather than a mere musical moment that you motor through. Let it breathe. This might be repeating a particularly poignant line a few times (or many times), it might be increasing the musical intensity or shifting to a quieter, “just the voices”, it could also be a musical interlude. It’s similar to Lectio Divina, a slower, reflective reading of scripture as you listen for God’s voice. But regardless of the mechanics, the idea of breathing in worship has stayed with me.

A fire also needs to breathe, especially when it’s getting started and it’s not very hot yet. At this stage, it can easily be put out. It’s fragile and tentative. I noticed this as I tried to find just the right amount of draft for the fire I was building at the cottage. As I tended it, I asked the Lord if there were other elements of this unfolding parable that he wanted me to observe?

I considered all the elements that have to come together for fire, I listed: heat, a spark, fuel, and air. But drilling down to think about the fuel, I reflected that you need different kinds of fuel. To light a fire, you need paper, kindling, but then to maintain it or grow it, you need various sizes of logs, the drier the better.

Here’s how I interpret this parable. It also might be something that gives you insight into your setting, perhaps some wisdom for how to become a priestly fire-tender.

The Spark: Of course, this is the most essential – without the spark, or the match, or the lighter to initially ignite the paper and kindling, you have a pile of cold logs, nothing more. This spark is obviously the Holy Spirit. He initiates the fire. Thankfully, we don’t have to beg for this, it’s what He loves to do.

Paper & Kindling: These catch the spark most easily and serve to hold fire against the logs, heating them up and giving them an opportunity to catch fire. But they have very little staying power; they can’t hold the fire for more than a few minutes and are quickly consumed to ash and coals. Paper and kindling represent the most responsive and sensitive among us, the ones who are first to notice the moving of the Spirit and are faithful to engage with what God’s doing.

Their responsiveness enables others, not as sensitively wired, to become aware of the Spirit, and to begin to respond. They are essential in getting a fire started.

Logs: These represent the gospel, the truth, and revelation of the word of God that we continually need to be fed to maintain a fire. If you run out of fuel, the fire, no matter how strong and hot it was initially, will die. The logs are not people, it’s not people who keep a fire burning, it’s the gospel, and like logs, the purer it is (totally dry with no moisture or organic compounds like resin, oils, or tars) the less smoke.

Unseasoned, damp wood will smoke badly and won’t throw much heat. So we see that we need the pure gospel, unsullied by our egos, opinions, or agendas.

There are different sized logs that are suitable depending on how hot and well established a fire is. A big log, added to the fire too early, will crush it. But a small log, added to a raging fire will be inadequate to feed it and will be consumed in a few minutes. This is the skill of fire-tending, judging what size of log is needed, and when.

Similarly, how big of a truth, or how weighty a concept, is a fit for the fire in your service? You judge by the hunger and the heat, adding enough preaching of the word, (whether that’s done in liturgy, in worship, in testimony, or in actual preaching) to feed and grow the hunger. Too little and it will die out from lack of fuel, too much and it will be smothered.

Air: As I mentioned earlier, air is essential for a fire, especially in the early stages as the draft builds the heat. Rushing through a service will most often quench the Spirit because we don’t allow time to digest and reflect on what we’re singing, the revelation that is brought through the preaching, or the words we repeat in liturgy. There is no silence, no time for response to what is preached. Additionally, trying to jam too much revelation into a sermon is a rookie mistake (that I might have made once or twice). It doesn’t allow the truth that has been shared the space it needs to move to our hearts.

It’s not by accident that the instruction of “selah” punctuates the Psalms. “Pause and think about that” is an apt interpretation of that word.

We might need to plan for our services to be a bit longer. When your service is tightly timed, and there is a countdown clock for each element of the service on the back wall facing the pulpit, it’s very hard not to feel the pressure to keep things moving, even if the Holy Spirit is inviting you to linger. This is a challenge for churches that are sharing facilities or have multiple services back-to-back; however, we somehow have to allow the Spirit space to move.

We make space for the Spirit only when we recognize that we need to do so.

Heat: The higher the temperature of the fire, the more easily and quickly wood ignites, and the more difficult it is for the fire to be extinguished. It’s the coals, produced by the work of the burning, that holds heat and enables it to endure when conditions shift to less than optimal. In our parable, I would suggest it’s the Eucharist that takes the burning wood (the preaching of the gospel) and transforms it into deep, heart-level, heat-carrying coals. The Eucharist raises the heat level and establishes the fire so that it endures, and kindling isn’t needed each time a new log is added. It’s a mysterious, supernatural work that causes us to lean into communion at a spirit level rather than just the intellectual enjoyment of a well-crafted sermon.

I noticed over the course of our cottage stay that each fire I lit was different. The logs were different sizes and shapes, some caught easily, others needed more kindling, more coaxing, before they held a flame. But the result was the same; the beauty and warmth of a blazing fire that lit up the room and changed the cottage atmosphere from chilly to relaxing.

LET’S APPLY THIS

So here are my takeaways, the ways I’m going to try to apply this parable:

• Encourage the especially sensitive (prophetic) people who often discern the Spirit moving first but might be too shy or intimidated to respond or say anything.

• Give worship leaders “permission” to let a song breathe when they are sensing the increase of the presence of God. (But remind them, it’s God who initiates, so don’t try to manufacture something).

• Make sure that I build space for reflection and application into my sermons

• Lean into the Eucharist with expectation that God will keep using it to draw me into union with Him in His beautiful, mysterious ways. Encourage others to do so as well.

• Pray- as I built every fire this week with absolute confidence that it would light and it would burn, pray for each meeting and service we hold with the same faith-filled confidence that God Himself will bring the fire. Perhaps a small, gentle flame, other times a roaring blaze, but His promise is that when we gather, He is in the midst of us, and He is the God who answers by fire. (Mt 18:20,1Ki 18:24)