All Consuming Fire;
God’s Burning Love For You.
At Home Among the Flames
Setting the kindling ablaze, I remember watching as the tongues of fires licked up and smoldered against the thin sticks, crackling, popping, and sending up showers of sparks. Soon, my jacket would be doused in smoke, and the flames would bite higher and higher into the crisp cool air of a Michigan winter.
For me, the smell of smoke sends me back to some of these happiest moments in my life. Camping in the thick oak and pine forests of northeastern Michigan, laughing with friends by the warmth of the fire. In those places, near the flames and comfort of their heat, which kept back the frost, I felt free to be entirely myself. Wild and carefree. At home among the flames
The Lord as Fire
Fire is vital to our life on Earth. It enables us to cook food, stay warm, be protected from animals, and shines light into dark places. But fire, we all know, is when untamed, violent, terrifying and devastating. It will rip through hillsides, and consume every branch, twig and leaf. This is the image which many in the bible use on multiple occasions to describe God. “Take care, lest you forget…For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” Deut. 4:23–24. And again, a few chapters later, Moses writes, “Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the Lord your God.” Deut, 9:3. This is a strong image, but it shows that God’s power fights for us!
God’s Burning Love
It comforts me to think of God in this way, but I find myself wondering about the tame side of fire. The kind of fire which is beneficial. The kind of fire which made me feel so safe and free back in the wilds of Michigan as a boy, and continues to fill me with tremendous joy and warmth as a man. And in an unexpected place, the role of this more intimate type of fire jumped off the page.
Love, in the Song of Solomon, is described this way in chapter 8, “Love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.”
Is there anything warmer than Love? And is there anything more prone to cause pain if left untamed? How many times have you been hurt by the people you love most, or hurt those very same people? And how many times have their gentle words, affectionate time spent together with you, and their kind touch made you feel, in a word, home? God’s love for us is like this as well. We can cozy up beside the wide hearth of God’s unchanging, passionate love for us and make our home there. We can rest soundly, knowing that this All-Consuming Fire who is God, goes before us and behind us to advocate and protect us against our enemies. And He leaves himself open, therefore, to the scolding burns of rejection, for the sake of Love.
His fire for you will never go out.