Firelighting

Three weeks ago, when I was staying with friends in the Borders, one morning I offered to light the fire. Fire has always fascinated me, and I couldn't resist the opportunity.

That fascination is probably why I like using the Barbecue in the summer, and our coal fire in the house during the winter (using smokeless fuel, of course!). With all that experience I didn't think it would take me long.

However, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. The coal was wet, and there were no firelighters! Now admittedly, when I'm using the Barbecue, I have a metal chimney for lighting the charcoal, which just needs some newspaper and one match. But the charcoal is dry, rather than wet.

So, although I had newspaper, kindling sticks, and coal, it took me several attempts before the fire got going, and all that took about an hour, rather than the ten minutes or so I had initially imagined.

It's strange, isn't it? In some scenarios, fires start too easily - electrical sparks in the house, cigarette ends or careless fires in summer droughts. Sometimes bits of glass can start a fire from bright sunshine, and in summer thunderstorms lightning strikes can set whole forests ablaze. Such situations are rather a contrast to my pathetic attempts to light the fire.

It all made me think back to incidents in the life of the early church. When the Holy Spirit came, "They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them." (Acts 2:3, TNIV). The Holy Spirit was vital to the development of the early church. Without the Spirit's activity the church would have withered and died as had happened many other religious initiatives of the time.

In those days the followers of Jesus were expectant, they were ready and waiting for the Spirit. And when the Spirit arrived, they caught fire, and thousands of people joined their number (Acts 2:41).

Many church communities today are not in the same place of expectancy and preparation. If the Spirit came with the spark of flame, sceptics and scoffers would rush to put out the fire before their way of doing things was consumed by the flames.

We should be gathering tinder, drying off the fuel, and preparing for a mighty conflagration, when the Spirit comes to energise Jesus' Church to gather in the harvest. Are you dry tinder, or a wet blanket?