Page 2 – The Fire of the Word – Chris Webb
When my house was set on fire my family was home and in our beds and we escaped with the clothes on our backs. As I watched our house burn I knew that all was lost, but my family was safe and it was well with my soul. Regrettably, this peace would not last.
I couldn’t know that losing everything was the first and smallest sorrow, that rebuilding would be the great suffering. I couldn’t see that it would be wrangling with insurance and utilities, with the township and the builder and too many of the sub-contractors that would bring me to my knees and have me up night after sleepless night.
Eighteen months after our fire I found myself smack in the middle of the cycle Webb describes, at the stage of alienation, sorrow and abject confession. Intellectually I knew that my fire was the result of one man’s terrible choice, and not some divine test, and yet my sense was that I had failed. I had not trusted God well enough and was grieved and ashamed. That might seem ridiculous, but it was my truth.
Webb understands this. “We ride this emotional and spiritual rollercoaster because of the image of God we carry in our hearts: a loving Father when we behave, but a pitiless judge when we stray.”
For him this broke in a profound moment of hearing God’s voice and he finally understood, “…I had made the mistake of assuming that my moral failure defined my relationship with God, that my brokenness was the starting point (and too often the ending point) of our friendship. It is not and never will be. The realization burst in that when God looks at me, what he sees is shaped by his intense and passionate love, not by anything I may or may not have done. In my ignorance I had thought that God first and foremost wanted to deal with my sin. In reality, before all else, he wanted me.”
When I read that I exhaled and wept. I knew this once but had forgotten.
I read The Fire of the Word to explore the metaphor of fire and it is there, woven in and through almost every chapter, but more importantly I was reminded that our experience of God is primarily a relationship. For Jesus and me, the last year or so has been like a long dry spell in an old marriage. I was alternately withholding myself or clawing desperately at his sleeve, neither of which – I promise you – deepen intimacy. But, just like my actual marriage; I’m in it for the long haul. I’m grateful to Chris Webb for writing this book that called me back into reading the Bible and the “…thin place through which the presence of God breaks into this world and bursts with unpredictable consequences into our lives.”
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Alison Hodgson is a wife and mother, a writer and speaker. She blogs at olderthanjesus.blogspot.com and is working on her first book, an etiquette guide for perilous times.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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I had the opportunity to be a student of Chris’s during a week retreat with my Renovare Institute cohort. His teachings on this subject were amazing and I am forever blessed.