My father-in-law accidentally bought a wood stove shop over 40 years ago. He thought he simply bought a building, but apparently didn’t know he also purchased the inventory of wood stoves and fireplace paraphernalia. This led to a great giveaway of all things related to fire and warming, until the only thing they kept was a tiny Norwegian wood cook stove. They used it as decoration until they began their grand adventure of RV’ing around the country, at which point my wife and I welcomed the stove into our garage.
Have Patience: Some things have value while lying dormant.
When we moved to Seattle we took the stove with us in hopes that, someday, there’d be a cabin space in our lives that would need its warmth. And there, in Seattle, it sat in our family room basement for nearly twenty years. We moved to the mountains in 2014, welcoming my now 98 year old mother-in-law to move in with us, and brought the stove with us, where it sat in the garage for ten years, serving no purpose other than a place for ping pong balls to hide behind during a game. Still, we saw value, and hoped, and waited.
I’m convinced that everyone has unique gifts they can offer the world, gifts given by their creator. As a result, light, beauty, justice, hospitality, encouragement, creativity, hope, and so much more that’s needed can be poured into our world; sometimes a drop at a time, and other times, in a full blown deluge. We are, after all, made for such stuff.
It’s also true that sometimes these gifts we have sit on a shelf, because every subject needs an object, every giver a receiver, every healer an illness or need, every painter a canvass, plus a little paint, and time, and perseverance.
Here’s my first takeaway from our stove adventures: If you have gifts you feel are being underutilized, don’t toss them from your life too quickly. Paul the apostle apparently had a gift of preaching, but its also apparent his first audiences didn’t think so. He was run out of town, and his gift sat in the garage of his soul, so to speak, for fourteen years. The prophet Samuel saw gifts of royalty in David, the youngest son of Jesse. Not only did nobody else see the gifts, but even once they were confirmed, he was at least fourteen years on the run from a existing king, who tried twice to kill him (political intrigue, threats to ego, and threats of violence are apparently nothing new). So ‘ruling’ also sat in the garage until the time was right.
If your art hasn’t found an audience, or your teaching hasn’t found students, or if obligations prevent the full devotion of our time to the gifts inside you, or if there’s a little fire in you growing about a justice issue, but you’re not sure why, don’t worry about it. Things take time.
For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay. Habakkuk 2:3
It Takes a Village: Let others help awaken you to your gifts
Two years ago, with help of a brilliant actual architect, I was able to exercise my own architecture design muscles a bit, as we built an office, named after Hildegard of Bingen, the eco-feminist mystic who loved Christ fiercely, but also loved the earth, and justice, and humility (more about her later). After a single winter, it seemed clear that the stove, with its desire to bless with heat, had found the perfect place to rest. But alas, few things are easy in this life. The stove was old enough that the hole for the chimney fits no existing chimney pipe. A friend who knows wood stoves looked at it and said, ‘nice stove’ but then said, ‘too bad there’s no pipe on the planet that will fit that hole.’
That would be the end of the story, except for this friend named George. He and his wife were visiting one day and I showed him the stove and explained why we’d never used it. For reasons beyond my understanding, he took this problem on and tried, and tried, and tried yet a third time to solve it by fabricating a piece that would become a sort of intermediary between standard pipe and the stove exit hole. He measured. He worked with a friend. A part was made. And then remade. And then remade a third time. Honestly, I’d have given up a long time earlier, but my friend George had a far more fierce faith in the project than I did.
This is the story of my life, not just a stove. I’ve carried layers of insecurity and unbelief that I had anything to offer the world inside me all my life, for reasons too personal to share here (at least for now). Always… yes, every single time, there were others who believed in me way more than I believed in myself.
My first little league coach told me I was uniquely talented at defending the outfield from fly balls, and a strong enough arm to throw runners out on base. I believed him, and became an all-star.
My band director in high school told me I was a gifted musician, and that he wanted me to join the band that summer for their European tour. There were only of a few of us that young who were invited, but the trip changed my life, introducing me a much bigger world than my Central Valley of California upbringing, and later giving me the willingness to travel all over the world alone as part of my teaching ministry.
My preaching instructor in seminary told me I had a gift, and that he hoped I would go into church work as a preaching pastor rather than academia.
My mentors in ministry in Torchbearers affirmed my teaching gift, which led to countless opportunities to share Christ as the fundamental source of life, hope, strength, and meaning.
And when the church I led in Seattle grew from 300 to 200 in year one, I told the board I’d be happy to return to relative anonymity in the mountains, to a person they said, ‘You’ll be fine. You are the right person for this moment and place. We believe in you. Stay.’ And stay I did, for over 25 years, but not because of my strength… rather because others believed in me more than I believed in myself.
Of course there have been plenty who didn’t believe in me too, sometimes rightly and other times not. The point for now, though, is to encourage you to listen for those voices of affirmation that come to you, especially when they come from more than one source, and more than one time. They might be helping you move the stove that is your gift into the space in this world that’s freezing and in need of your warmth.
Thanks Coach, and Larry, and Mike, and Charlie, and Major Thomas, and Bethany Board, and most recently, George. Your faith warms my heart, and now the tiny space that is Hildegard.
Learn about the Fire
Once our little stove was installed in Hildegard, I tried to light a fire. Smoke immediately began coming out of the vents rather than going up the chimney. A second try, with more aggressive blowing in the nascent flames, and in the right direction, prompted the smoke upwards, and soon we had fire and then, because its a cook stove, fresh coffee too.
Most of my readers don’t cut, split and stack four cords of wood each summer, and then burn about the same amount (usually cut 18 to 24 months earlier) each winter, so let me tell you a little something about fire. Fires require heat, oxygen, and dry fuel if they’re to burn. It’s an ecosystem that will fail without all three. Assuring that all three are present, in the right amounts, requires patience. Nurturing the initial fire also requires patience and often an extra dose of oxygen. The dry fuel requires time spent on hot summer days, cutting, splitting, gathering, and stacking wood, provided in lots of providential ways, so that its dry enough when, a year later, the time comes for fire.
It’s no stretch to say that sometimes while working with wood and lighting the stove, I recall that God’s Spirit is displayed in the Bible as fire, and that we’re told not to ‘quench the spirit.’ In my youth, I thought that meant don’t look at porn, or swear, or get drunk, or cheat on my physics quiz. While that’s all still good advice, I now see, through years of wood stove use and fires, that when fires fail to start or die too early, the problem isn’t with the fire. It’s with the keeper of the fire, i.e….me.
“Is the wood of my life ready to be lit?” by which I mean, am I ready to let my plans, ego, and addictions to pleasures go up in flames, in favor of the light of Christ’s flame shining through me? I’m still asking that question many days, trying to keep the fuel ready and available.
“Am I letting the wind of the spirit blow into me?” Habits which foster an awareness of the invisible realities: that we’re loved deeply, that we have the life God in us through Christ, that we have gifts to give the world… these are the air that keep the fire going. I’ve written about habits to keep that spirit wind working here, and will simply note that my habits spoken of in that book have become life sustaining for me on an almost daily basis.
Finally to welcome “heat” means that I’m welcoming an infusion of supernatural energy, know it will change me, awaken me, call me, empower me, but know too, that I’ll be pushed far far beyond the comfort zones of my smaller, more anxious and protective, self. Like Frodo, we’ll be led to places we’d never dreamed of going, and it will require shedding our addictions to comfort and security. But we’ll be flame, and so that will make the whole thing worthwhile.
O Flame of Christ
Thanks be to you for the new old stove
Who waited patiently for time and place
Before taking its rightful spot
And awakening to its calling
Heat and light to all who come here
From the cold and dark
Thanks be to you for every stick, and their gatherings
For every moment spent in preparation
As sunlight served their destiny
Thank you for flame, the source
Which points to the True Source
Of all light, warmth, hope, and healing.
May your flame find full expression,
In the fullness of time, in us
So that light might shine
On us
In us
Through us
Amen
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