“…oh, it must be some naughty children playing with matches…”
Years ago, before I began my love-affair with God-in-Africa, I read an article in Smithsonian Magazine about the illegal charcoal industry in Nigeria. It was estimated that the trade was a 30 billion dollar industry…. staggering when you think that the average wage is $20 per day.
Fast-forward a couple of decades and I am in the midle of Tanzania bouncing around in the back of a Land Cruiser one night packed together with a mess of Anglican priests and a couple of bishops in the cushy seats….
“Dennis, what are all those fires around us”
“Oh, it must be some naughty children playing with matches”… smirks grew on faces of the others.
It wasn’t until years later that I learned from a beloved Tanzania brother that all the fires were the illegal charcoal trade… I asked why the trees on the side of the roads had their trunks stripped of bark (I knew)… that is how they “find” dead wood to harvest illegally. They they burn it and cover it with dirt and let it turn into charcoal… fuel. Everybody in the villages where I spent time used charcoal. You had to, there was no electricity.
And the Spirit of God began to whisper in my ears about fire and charcoal and hidden places….
“If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.”
Jeremiah 20:9
Making charcoal is very simple. Collect dry wood (dead and down). Dig a pit. Put the wood in the pit and ignite it, then cover it with dirt and allow it to smolder for three days or so…. keep it low and slow to remove all the moisture. Buried fire produces controlled, sustained, valuable heat. It is usable.
This is the God-Life-way. Dead produces life.
Are you willing to die and be buried, smothered so that all the life is slowly taken out of you? That, is baptism.
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Romans 6:4
Buried fire is dangerously hot. Be dangerous beloveds. Be dangerous.