Fire

"The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire."

-T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding, IV

I have been thinking about a revolution lately. Then heard Dr. K preach revival for two weeks. So now my burning question (I change them out from time to time) is: how can I carry out a revolution or revival when I am so damnably apathetic? I think I belong to an age of apathy (that's what the overpass on I-205 says anyway). Even my "burning questions" don't light me on fire. For all God has done- "It has set him on fire all around, Yet he did not know; And it burned him, Yet he did not take it to heart." (Is 42).
So I asked how can our hearts be burned? When we are unable to set ourselves on fire?
Rev. Messner, chaplain of Covenant college, preached about those infamous lovers of boiled meat, Nadab and Abihu. God is holy- in his presence sin is consumed by fire. Our God is a consuming fire. But after Jesus' death and resurrection, the Spirit came down as a flame of fire on them, but they were not killed, they were filled with the fire.
Can I, an apathetic American, be set on fire? It seems impossible. The Ugandan churches are burning. And the further north you go, the closer to poverty and persecution, the brighter the flame.
Still I will not pray that Hillary is elected and terrorists break down our nation so we too can experience persecution. The Church is one. Our Church is burned by the fire of our enemies and the fire of God (65 churches in India were burned a few weeks ago, last week a church in Kenya was burned with dozens of people inside)- yet we do not take it to heart.
Whatever nationality we are, whatever blessings or persecution we experience, we are only fuel for the fire. The Spirit can burn us all the same. So my prayer is that we will be set on fire. That we will stop trying to quench the fire and learn to live by and breath out flames.

"May I always see thy beauty with the clear eye of faith,
and feel the power of Thy Spirit in my heart,
for unless He move mightily in me
no inward fire will be kindled."
- a Puritan