Playing With Fire in 2020

I’m not really the type for New Year’s Resolutions lately. Maybe it’s because, over the past several years, I’ve learned how to inventory my life regularly enough to make major changes when necessary. However, that doesn’t mean that I think I’m all good. I have the mindset that I’ll take things as they come rather than to try and make significant life overhauls all at once. Especially while riding the post-Christmas, pre-semester, pink cloud of low stress, and free time. It won’t last, and neither will any life-changing decisions I make this week.

With all of that being said, though, I did do something new yesterday on the very first day of a new decade. My wife and I went on a guided hike in a Florida State Park. It was charming to be outside and observe God’s creation. It was nice to connect with something other than the fictitious world that exists in books and behind screens. But I learned something yesterday that really connected with me about the condition of my heart and the cycles of muddiness, confusion, and complication that occur in my life. It was the idea of a Prescribed Fire.

Fire with a Purpose

The natural forest that we hiked is filled with naturally occurring pine trees, palmettos, and animals that call it home. All of these species of plants and wildlife live together and fulfill a specific purpose within the natural order that keeps the forest alive and well. However, there are also invasive and non-native species of plants that have made their way into the ecosystem. They crowd out the natural plants and create an inhospitable environment for the ground critters that are trying to live their best lives. These invasives grow low to the ground and compete for resources, just generally creating a messy situation. The good news is that they are not very fire resistant, not like the native plants. So rangers solve the problem by performing “prescribed burns.”

Essentially they light the forest on fire on purpose. Which seems ridiculous to people who live in the age of the California Wildfires epidemic. But these folks know what’s up. They start a controlled fire that doesn’t burn hot enough or high enough to disturb the naturally occurring wildlife. This clears out the low lying, resource sucking plant life that is creating an inhospitable living situation for the species that are meant to be living in the forest. It’s all pretty cool, and I think you might already know where I’m going with this whole deal.

What Invades Your Ecosystem?

The Biblical narrative starts out like this. God made us and declared that we were good. He gave us a purpose — to go forth and multiply, to make the rest of the earth a place that represented the garden that he had planted and set us in. That garden was a place where there was abundance, a place where the spiritual and the physical realms intersected, a place where God walked with his people. But the people made a choice, and that choice introduced something invasive into the world. We call it sin, and on a global scale it has prevented humanity from being able to live out its full purpose.

But this isn’t about the rest of the world. This is about you and me. You see, we have still been given the same purpose in life. Our mission is to love God and to love others. Which is essentially the mode in which we are fruitful and cultivate a world in which the spiritual and physical realms co-exist (as best as they can in our current state). Unfortunately, this isn’t easy. We are still susceptible to making a mess out of situations, even when we go in with the best of intentions. We can again do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and trick ourselves into thinking that we are doing good enough. We still find, despite our best efforts, the God-loving and others-focused part of our being is fighting a battle for resources with the invasive parts of our character, and it is losing. We find ourselves drowning in a sea of resentment, anger, fear, over-commitment, and selfishness. Our attention has been diverted away from being fruitful and stewarding God’s kingdom to barely surviving. At the same time, we build walls and fortify our own kingdom here on earth.

Playing With Fire

What if the solution resembles what the parks service does to preserve a natural forest? God created us as good, and he has made it possible for us to at least resemble that status with his defeat of sin and death on the cross. In fact, we bear God’s image, which makes us capable of fulfilling his divine purpose for our lives. However, the effects of sin or shortcomings are like invasive plants that compete for our attention. They make our hearts a place that is less hospitable for the beautiful forest of compassion, love, and holiness that he has created us to be. The defects of our character stand in direct opposition to the mission God has given us. So maybe a little prescribed fire can be the answer to our struggling this year.

The Apostle Paul, in his dealings with the church in Corinth and their constant struggle with idolatry and immorality, gave this advice. “Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God (2 Corinthians 7:1, NRSV). Throughout the biblical story, fire is a means of purification. So maybe what we need in 2020 is to allow God to start prescribed fires in our hearts. The results may not be as instantaneous and groundbreaking as some of our loftier attempts to quit smoking, eat better, and join the gym. However, I believe that we can begin to purify our hearts and declutter our lives by allowing God to do the heavy lifting or burning.

I’m not saying it will be painless. Those trees in the forest show marks of being fire kissed. But they also show tremendous foliage and outward signs of their cooperation with the rest of their ecosystem as eagles, owls, and osprey make nests in their upper branches. It is my belief and my experience that when I give God permission and take my hands off the wheel, he can and will remove the mess that strangles my life. It requires me to let go of the things that he takes and embrace the things that he gives, but I can better do those things when I am consciously aware of what is happening.

So my advice is: get on the list for a prescribed fire by surrendering your heart to him here at the beginning of 2020. No matter where you are on your faith journey, resolve to ask him to burn away that which is preventing you from having a fruitful life that ushers in his kingdom on earth. Ask him to progressively reveal to you his way of living — the path to loving him and loving those around you. And then go along with it. Learn lessons from the things that challenge your presumptions about others and the world, be molded, be changed. Become a person who embodies what it truly means to be human, become a person who images Jesus to a world that doesn’t know him. Go, be fruitful, and multiply.