This Is Fire

Last night Mitzi got out her new blow torch and lit a candle for the kitchen table. It pops and roars like an oxy-acetylene welding rig. Whenever she lights it off, I expect her to burn through the glass Yankee Candle holder to the oak beneath. It has to be the most powerful BiC lighter we have ever owned. I bought it last week as a replacement for the anemic lighter we used last year to light the fireplace. On its last legs, the old lighter sputtered and maddenlingly went out just as I touched the fire logs. No pitiful orange flame now. Nope, this is a genuine blue beast, the kind you can feel good about. I suspect Mitzi of wandering around the basement when I’m not there, looking for a couple of pieces of scrap steel to weld.

I used to think that welding was a manly thing – that is, until I took a metal sculpture class and found myself the only male in a group of about six women. Six women in elbow length gloves, leather aprons, and dark goggles lighting off torches at 6,000 ˚ F and attacking bits of metal in all sizes and shapes with one object in mind: to create something new and beautiful. That’s a human thing, whether it’s done with sound and fury in a metal shop or hushed, pantomimed movements in a floral design studio. Created in the image of God, we are, ourselves, compelled to create, to make something lasting and meaningful.

I found I didn’t care for metal sculpture. I’m more suited to repairing trailer tongues than making beautiful designs, and I like the coarse company of pipefitters, welders, and sheet-metal workers. And I have also learned that work done with pride can be both beautiful and lasting. A welding instructor once told me that a good weld will last forever. I don’t know about that, but I do know that joined-metal is more likely to break somewhere other than the bead, much like a healed fracture is stronger than the bone around it.

This season we pause to remember that in a stable in Bethlehem, God fulfilled a promise to Isaiah: “Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming, Do you not see it?” (Is 43:19, HCSB) On that Christmas night, God entered the world. As John put it, “the Word became flesh and took residence among us.” (Jn 1:14, HCSB) Heaven and earth, divinity and humanity are joined and all of creation is raised to a new level. What’s more, we are promised that same event in our own lives: the joining of heaven and our piece of earth, divinity with our humanity. Much around us may shatter, but the welding together of the Holy Spirit and our spirit is eternal.

There is a reason God’s agent of renewal, the Holy Spirit, is portrayed as a rushing wind and a tongue of fire. It takes raw power to transform a life, a power beyond anything we possess. An acetylene torch is a sickly thing, with a yellow flame and a smell of rotten eggs. It is only when you turn the valve and let the oxygen flow that you hear the roar and see the tiny, perfect blue-cone dancing off of the welding tip. Here is power. Here is fire.

This Christmas Baby Jesus lies on my mantel in His porcelain manger. But this is more than a baby; this is power; this is oxygen to turn our lives into white hot fire.

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