Clay in the Hands

In all my years of sharing my thoughts and my heart here in this way, I have never gone as long between posts.  I began this ministry and personal pilgrimage in 2009 with a personal commitment to write at least three times per week – recording in this format a little piece of myself each time.  There have been dry spells in my pilgrimage over the past eight years but never have I stepped away from this discipline for this long.

On August 25th, my life and daily routine was altered.  When hurricane Harvey hit land on that evening, I did not realize the way it would affect the days to follow.  Please understand that my family and I, our church family and most of Corpus Christi were hardly affected physically by the storm.  But those just over the bridge were greatly impacted.  So I am not referring to any real damage that I have had to deal with personally but rather in how we have chosen to respond to the devastation our brothers and sisters to our north have been living through (and will continue to do so).  In the coming posts I will attempt to unpack the experience of the last month.

But for today, I feel compelled to share what God reminded me of this morning.  My reading this morning came from 2 Timothy 1.  In the beginning lines of Paul’s letter to his protege, he challenged Timothy with this:  “fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you.”

The reminder coming from God this morning was this – as believers we have received God’s spirit and his calling on our lives but we are tasked with fanning what we have received into flame.  It is so easy to let the fire go out.

I am not suggesting that we can lose the Spirit or the calling but we can lose the passion and the intensity of living out this calling with our entire existence.  Life happens – storms come our way that move us off course and before we realize it, the flame has died down.  It is our responsibility to tend the flame.

Today – tend the fire, fan the flame and live into the calling God has placed on your life!