fire

Today is the Fourth of July. It’s that holiday where we Americans celebrate our freedom and nationhood by charring meat and exploding huge amounts of money. 

Normally those activities don’t remind me of the gospel story, but this morning, I’m struck by John the Baptist’s prophecies regarding Jesus. Here’s an example from Luke3:16-18: “‘He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’ And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.”

Our passion for firecrackers and night-blossoms is, I think, intended to be a vicarious enjoyment, made safe by distance and a massive degree of scale, of the “rockets’ red glare” of war that won our freedom. Today instead it reminds me of the fiery purification of the world that will happen when God finally is finished with the harvest and gets down to business. And it reminds me that true freedom has nothing to do with military might or being a world superpower.

One day I’ll be threshed like wheat, and my impurities will be seared away – my baptism too will include fire. One day, all of the unsaved, those to whom the things of God seemed foolish, will burn. That will be a horrible, beautiful day; not a holiday, but certainly a holy day.