The Grace of Wild Fire

This week has been a real gift.  I often find myself ranting at how cruel and unthinking human beings can be to one another, how we cling to and enhance the divisions between us, and how we live and work in ways that are cruel to the Earth.  Drives Me Nuts somedays.

So hearing and seeing the response to folks fleeing the Wild Fires of northern AB has certainly been a good thing for my spirit. Food and clothes, water and gas, parking and homes offered freely, donations abounding; it’s a humbling reminder that the “milk of human kindness” isn’t gone after all.  The care and compassion being extended –especially the kind that cannot be returned – is watching God-in-Action.  Same for those on the receiving end: it’s hard to accept that we need help, especially the kind that cannot be returned.  It’s called Grace.

So thank you for a grace-filled week.

That it was a fire got me thinking….

Wild Fire is untameable. Wild Fire reminds us we are not in control. Wild Fire finishes on its own terms, not ours.  Wild Fire can strip us of our language away and all we can say is “oh. my.” or WOW, Incredible.  Wild Fire makes me truly feel awe-and-fear; I wonder if that’s what the poets of the bible call “fear of the Lord”?  Wild Fire reminds me how small I am and that humbles my (often oversized) Ego.  And Wild Fire will make new things come from the ground, the Land; it will renew and make new all that it touches.

Hmmmm. Is that why images of Fire are often used when people encounter the Holy Mystery? Untameable. Unnameable. Uncontrollable. It is Who it is and is, “beyond perfect description or knowledge”.  Holy Fire evokes that that awe-and-fear feeling –humbling, respect-full, awed, rendered speechless. It renews the parched land of the soul.  It makes things new.

So I can’t miss the irony that this Sunday, at Church, we’re being a season of Spirit Arriving; it’s a time of renewal and growth and being picked up by the lapels and put someplace else on the road.  And the most ‘interesting’ story of the Spirit Arriving uses wind and fire imagery. Wild Fire. Renewing Fire. En-courage-ing Fire.  And through it, God made something new happen, beyond what anyone could imagine.

I am not making light of the profound grief of those affected, or undervaluing the thousands of labour hours being put in by the variety of (often exhausted) emergency responders. I certainly don’t underestimate what it will take to rebuild the communities affected.

But I do hope to hold on to the all of the images of the Wild Fire.  I hope it will let me keep the faith that even these Wild Fires are being used by Holy Mystery to touch our hearts, to renew us, to help us build a country beyond our imagination. To welcome God-in-Action in our midst.

thanks to kenoraonline.com and 660news.com for posting the photos!