Every once and a while you see something that you never forget. I used one of those images in a sermon yesterday. It is one of the few images that really shook me when I saw it as a kid. The picture shows a Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in 1963 to protest the treatment of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. Seven monks killed themselves in protest that year. These images circled the globe and helped bring attention to their cause.
While I certainly don't agree with their thoughts on religion, I do admire their dedication to what they believed. They really caused people to take notice. Jesus did the same thing in how he lived. Jesus said that He came to bring fire on the earth (Luke 12:49). John the Baptist said that Jesus would baptize His followers with fire and the Holy Spirit. Hebrews describes God as a consuming fire.
Christians are called to live a life on fire. Our lives should make others curious about the Lord we claim to serve. The only catch is that we can't set ourselves on fire for God. Only Jesus can do that through the Holy Spirit. All we can do is get close to the fire. As we seek the face of God, we are changed into His likeness from glory to glory. God is the one who turns us into the kind of person who has something to say.
Curiously, a life on fire has nothing to do with how we feel or whether things are going "good" for us at the time. It has everything to do with the reality of Christ in our lives no matter we are going through or how we may feel at the time. Fire comes by faith.
I love this quote I found off the Web. "A man on fire disturbs the world, a building on fire attracts the world, a community on fire changes the world."
