Not dead enough

We got a bad batch of wood. 

The tree had been dead for a long time--or so we thought--and the split wood looks like it should burn nicely. That's what we need considering we rely on the heat of our wood stove for eight months of the year. But that's not what we got. 

The wood catches fire all right. The inside of the stove lights up with a promising yellow glow. But the fire gives no heat. The flames sputter as the wood sizzles and pops from the sap still lingering within. Eventually the wood burns up without ever warming our home. 

What a waste. What a disappointment to huddle before a fire that offers no warmth. What a frustration to sit in my cold house and watch all that promising timber burn itself out for nothing.

Honestly, lately life seems to resemble that wood. I often feel I am doing everything "right," everyone around me is doing everything "right," but life is a flame with no heat, a fire that pops and sizzles and never offers any true or lasting warmth. 

Am I being too melodramatic? Probably. But I can't help feeling there is some truth here. 

Be honest. Don't you ever feel, like I do, that you are just sort of smoldering? Like we're all going crazy trying to get this thing right and all we ever get is some smoke and some sparks, but no heat? And why are we going so hard, burning ourselves up for nothing? 
 
The best firewood comes from trees that are really dead, but not rotten. Our wood still holds too much of its own life to take in the life of the fire. It burns, but it burns without heat because of the sap inside.

Our wood isn't dead enough.

Bear with me here. Maybe it's a stretch to make this comparison, but I've been thinking a lot about death lately. I've been thinking about all the ways I feel stuck in life, in my faith, in relationships, and about the idea that God asks us to die to ourselves. Not just once, but every single day. 

He says the best kind of life--the only life, really--comes from death. We have to die in order to find that life. But we have this idea of death being the end. We cling to life and we try to pack every single thing we can into it before death takes us. 

But what if death is a beginning? What if we have to die to our own idea of life before we can understand God's? And what if we started looking for ways to die so that new beginnings could spring up? 

Maybe we aren't dead enough. Maybe we are trying to burn bright and hot for God, but we are clinging to a life he wants us to let go of. The old life in our core keeps us from taking on the new life of the fire. 

Maybe we are just afraid. We want the fire, but we don't really want to burn. Because then, really, what is left but ashes? And so we try to burn our own way, and the fire runs sappy with life that shouldn't be there, and in the end we are left with ashes anyway. 

Do we believe that God brings beauty from ashes, as he promises? What if we really trusted that true life comes through death after all? What if we believed our death to self would accomplish a beautiful life beyond imagining?

And if we never burn at all? We end up dead anyway, rotting away in the despair of this world, useless to everyone. 

Maybe this is a crazy metaphor. I only know that I am longing for heat. For the blaze of God's presence. I don't want to just smoke and smolder. I want to burn with him. I want to learn what is holding me back, what life I am clinging to that keeps me from going all in. 

Our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). I want to be consumed by him. 

This morning I stepped into the cold darkness of the living room and built the fire as I always do. I didn't have much hope. But for whatever reason, this wood began to burn bright and hot. My living room filled with warmth, and sleepy children gathered around, and this became a refuge, a warm, welcoming sanctuary from the cold outside. 

We could be that sanctuary, I think. We could burn hot and draw in a world weary with the cold. The question is, do we really want to?