Walking Through Fire

The mountains are shrouded by smoke
As the sun casts her fiery path across the lake,
Shimmering crimson on uneasy waves.

The fire conceals as much as it reveals
Our weakness, our naked surprise at having
Nowhere left to run, no place untouched by burning.

I envision your people long ago, fleeing in haste
Through the reddest sea, following billows of smoke by day
And a pillar of fire by night.

Still we ask for deliverance, forgetting just how much
Deliverance asks of us: walking through fire, untouched and burning;
Clinging to the promise of being made new.

And so we pray, Deliver us.

I wrote this poem while sitting at my family’s kitchen table in Chelan, watching a thick blanket of smoke from a local fire obscure more and more until all I could see was a couple of steps beyond the windows. Though the fire itself is lamentable, the smoke provides the oddly comforting effect of being closed in—sheltered, almost—by something bigger than me. What a terrifying grace it is to be made acutely aware of my own powerlessness. In the spiritual world, I wonder if it is indeed the mercy of God which conceals everything but the next few steps in front of us. No matter how much I long for full revelation, perhaps to see the full journey is beyond what I could bear. I know this is true, yet surrendering the need to see my entire future mapped out before me has become a daily spiritual exercise.

As I transition from one season to the next, I find that the questions which were easier to silence in the joy of summer have begun to knock on the door of my heart once more: What is my purpose? Will I ever feel whole and courageous? What does it look like to dream in the midst of disappointment and loss? In such wilderness seasons I ache for answers to these deepest and loneliest questions, for a clear plan and purpose; but mostly, I ache for God to be more present than my fears—lovelier even than my hopes and dreams.

In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rainier Maria Rilke beautifully articulates the need for the soul to be well in the midst of unanswered questions:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

The soul that is at rest in the wilderness of unanswered questions is most available to receive the outpouring of Spirit and Flame that God delights to pour upon his thirsty people, though usually in ways we could never anticipate or expect. We may not have the answers right now to our most persistent questions, but we follow the God of cloud and fire, presence and mystery. God does not promise answers, but he does provide his Presence.

Is that enough for us?

Do we want God more than we want answers?

In this particular season, I confess that I have become so enamored with my vision for a good and beautiful future that I forget to look up and look around and relish in the beauty of right here and now. The smoke, for instance—terrible and beautiful at once. And the birds which bravely soar through it, swooping and diving for minuscule insects in the golden grass swaying below. And the gentle waves which persist without anyone having to tell them to keep pushing, flowing towards the shore.

“Send out your light and your truth; let them guide me,” the Psalmist prayed. And so, like the Israelites, we follow almost blindly and with just enough manna and light and truth for this day—this ordinary, mysterious, holy day. As we follow the Holy One through fire and smoke, through water and storm, may we receive the grace needed to bless the place we are today as the place where God’s glory passionately embraces our weakness. May we take off our shoes in reverence of God’s enduring presence in every atom of our lives.

And may we discover how to live into this one great and precious promise:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

(Isaiah 43:2)

Amen.

To go deeper: Listen to this lovely song based on Isaiah 43:1-2 by Porter’s Gate and Audrey Assad