Passing the Flame

Have you ever attended a Christmas Eve candlelight service or an Easter Vigil? The sanctuary lights are dim, if not off completely. The darker the better. A single flame is lit from the Paschal candle, and then that flame is shared. One candle lights another, and another, and another. Within minutes, what began as a lone point of light has become a sea of gold, each face softly illuminated, each flame dancing just a little differently, some steady, some flickering, some held high, some cupped close to a chest to protect against a draft.

And yet, if you were to trace any one of those flames back to its origin, you would find yourself at the same candle. The same fire. The same source.

I have often thought that this is one of the most beautiful pictures we have of what it means to live among the people of God.

We are not our own light. We never were.

But we have each been given a flame, and part of the wonder of the Christian life is learning to see that flame in the people around us, to celebrate it, and to let our own faith be kindled by the sight of theirs.

Because we can all stand there, holding our own candle, anxious about how the wax might drip. We might see some beauty in the single flame. But when we raise our eyes to see the lights spread across the people of God, the beauty becomes something more, the light becomes something greater. And then we begin to see our own light not merely as a little flame to hold for oneself, but as an integral part in a light that is shining among all God's people and illuminating the world.

 

The Light That Was Never Ours

Before we can rejoice in seeing God’s work in others, we have to remember something about the light itself. It does not belong to us. We are not its source. We bear it, we hold it, but it is not our light alone.

John the Baptist understood this better than most. The Fourth Gospel tells us plainly: "He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world" (John 1:8-9). John was a burning and shining lamp, as Jesus Himself would later say (John 5:35), but he knew whose fire he carried. He knew he was a witness, not the source.

This is the beginning of every healthy way of seeing other believers.

If I forget that the light in me is borrowed, then the light in you becomes a threat. I will compare. I will compete. I will notice the ways your flame burns brighter than mine and grow bitter, or notice the ways mine burns brighter than yours and grow proud.

But when I remember that I did not light myself, my perspective changes.

Your flame is no longer a rival to mine. It is a companion. It is even a comfort, because if the same Christ who is at work in you is at work in me, then perhaps I can trust Him a little more.

Perhaps the small, wavering flame I carry is more real than I feared.

 

Seeing Rightly

The real challenge is that we do not naturally see this way.

Our eyes are trained, from childhood, to notice failure before faithfulness, to catalog the flaws of others before we catalog the grace of God in them. We look at another Christian and see what irritates us, what disappoints us, what falls short.

But Saint Paul, writing to a variety of churches, all with different strengths, weaknesses, sins, and praiseworthy gifts, chose a different starting point.

Read the openings of his letters and you will find him again and again beginning with thanksgiving for what God has already done in those he addresses. ":I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:4).

This to the Corinthians, whose problems about schism and sexual immorality fill the rest of the letter.

Or to the Philippians: "I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of you in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:3-6).

Notice the movement. Paul remembers, he gives thanks, and then he grows in confidence. His hope for the future is anchored in what he has seen God do in the past, in these particular people, in the faces of people he'd seen come out of darkness and into light

None of them were apostles like he was. We only know the names of a few of them. But his faith is nourished, is strengthened, by their faith. The fire of their faith warms and comforts his soul.

This is not flattery, nor is it naivety.

Paul knew perfectly well how fragile human faithfulness can be. But he had trained his eyes to see God first. He looked at the Philippians and saw not first their struggles but the good work that had begun in them. He looked at the Corinthians and saw grace before he saw scandal.

What would it mean for us to look at our fellow Christians this way?

Not to pretend, not to flatter, but to genuinely train our eyes to notice the fingerprints of God on the people around us? To see the work that God was doing them even amidst their brokenness, their failures, and their flaws?

To see the young mother who prayed with her child last night, and to know that heaven noticed. To see the elderly widower who still shows up to Mass, or to Sunday service, week after week even though grief has hollowed him out.

To see the friend who forgave someone for something the world has deemed unforgivable.

To see the coworker who refused to play the "game" of getting ahead in the office at the expense of others, even though he or she might have deserved a promotion more than the other guy.

Each of these is a light-bearer. A Christ-bearer. Each of these carries a flame.

 

The Cloud of Witnesses

The candles do not only surround us in the present. They stretch backward through history, a long procession of light that reaches all the way to the empty tomb and beyond.

The Letter to the Hebrews, after cataloging the great figures of faith who lived and died believing, tells us: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).

The image is athletic, of a runner in a stadium surrounded by those who have run before, "retired" athletes if you will, who still love the game, and more that that, those who are still in it. And they're cheering.

They carry their flames too. And since they are glorified in heaven, having beheld the very face of God, they burn even brighter than we do.

But it's the same flame. The same source.

Every saint who ever lived was lit by the same fire that has now been passed to us.

Every now and then, someone will write me back. Never in an accusatory way, but out of curiosity. "Why do you quote so many saints? Why not just the Bible?"

Well, I don't think the Bible is a dead book. I don't think the Word of God is dead either. I think it is a living Word, just as the Word that was made flesh died, but still lives. I believe that every Christian who has ever lived is like a living, breathing, testimony of the Word made Flesh, the Word of God.

When I celebrate the saints who've gone before us, I'm not praising them in isolation. I'm honoring the light that they carried, and the unique way that it illuminated God's love in their lives.

Think of the martyrs who sang as they were led to the arena. Think of the desert mothers and fathers who found God in silence.

Their lives might look very different than yours or mine. But they still carried the same flame, and given that I am not called (at least not at present) to a martyrdom of body, and I'm not called to contemplation in the desert, but I'm called to be a husband, father, and an author, I can glean something in the reflection of the light as they carried it that helps illuminate the work of God in my life.

Think of Augustine wrestling his way from restless brilliance into the peace of the confessions. Think of Thérèse of Lisieux, dying young in a cloister, offering God her “little way” of trust. Think of the ordinary grandmother in the pew behind you last Sunday who has been praying for her wayward children for forty years and, even though her prayer has not yet brought her children into the faith, she has not stopped.

None of them lit themselves. All of them were lit. And by the great mercy of God, some of them lit us, whether they ever knew it or not. They passed their light down the row, and from there, the light continued to spread.

Think of the friend who spoke a word, almost in passing, that was exactly what we needed to hear in the moment. Think of the teacher who poured love into your life, who showed you patient, who might have been wearing a little cross around her neck, and in her quiet way, testified to the love of Christ even though the system didn't allow her to speak it aloud in the classroom. Think of the Sunday School teacher, or the friend who invited you to a Bible study, who first made Scripture come alive. Think of the stranger whose kindness reached us in an unexpected way on a hard day.

We are standing in a room full of candles. Most of them are small flames when seen alone. But when seen in the great chorus of God's people, they come together into a beautiful sea of light, love, and truth.

 

What This Does to Us

Something happens to the soul that learns to see God’s work in others. Three things, really.

First, our faith grows. It is one thing to believe that God is at work in the abstract. It is another to see, with your own eyes, the change in someone you have known for years, and to know that no explanation but grace accounts for it. The evidence is not in a book, not in some logical argument or defense of the faith. The evidence is standing in front of you, laughing, weeping, forgiving, serving. Faith becomes not a proposition to defend but a reality to which you are already a witness.

Second, our hope grows. If God has been faithful to them, He will be faithful to me. If He has not given up on that difficult brother, He will not give up on me. If He has been able to make something beautiful out of that shattered life, He can make something beautiful out of mine. This is why Paul could say he was “confident” of the good work in the Philippians. Seeing God’s work in others gives us permission to expect Him to keep working in us.

Third, and perhaps most surprisingly, our love grows. It is very hard to resent someone whose flame you have seen. Once you have really noticed the work of God in a person, they cease to be a category, a label, and become a soul with an entire story that God has been telling through the sweat and labor of their daily life. The neighbor who annoys you becomes the neighbor whom Christ is patiently forming. The rival becomes a fellow pilgrim, looking for a light in the distance that just might be the small flame you're carrying. Even the person who has hurt you begins to look different when you glimpse the flame in them, or the empty candle just waiting to be lit.

Saint John of the Cross wrote that “in the evening of life, we will be judged by love alone.” One of the ways love grows in us is by looking, really looking, at what God is doing in the people we have been given.

 

Practical Steps for the Week Ahead

You know I always like to give you a few "action items," a few gentle suggestions. Because was much as I love writing these devotions, I don't want you to read these each day and think, "well that's a nice thought." I want it to actually "spark" something in your life. The faith is meant to be lived. So here are a few suggestions today:

Try this. At the end of each day this week, before you sleep, ask yourself a single question: Where did I see God’s work in someone else today? Not in yourself. In someone else. It might be a small thing. A patience demonstrated that you admire. A small act of generosity. A word spoken well. A quiet endurance in the midst of a storm that was raging all around them. Write it down if you can, even just a sentence. Over a week you will begin to have a small collection of sightings, and you may find your soul warmer for it.

Second, when you pray, do what Paul did. Begin with thanksgiving. For the gifts of God in your life, yes, but also for the people in your life. Be specific about the grace you have seen in them. Not “thank you for my sister” but “thank you for the way my sister forgave me.” This kind of specificity trains the eye to see more clearly the light of Christ working within them.

Third, tell someone. When you notice the work of God in a person, say so. Not with flattery, but with honesty. “I saw what you did. I know what it cost you. I think God is in this.” While we don't want to fixate on our own candles, sometimes we need to remember that we carry a flame, too. That we are a part of the great light that fills the darkened sanctuary, and even the darkened world in which we live. If that's true for us, and we could use a reminder every now and again of the work that God is doing in us we've taken for granted, the same is true for others. Let them know you see it, you notice it.

Sort story, just as an aside. Yesterday I went to the gas station. The young lady, probably nineteen or twenty, behind the counter was just berated by her manager before I got to the counter. She was in tears as she helped me. I simply looked at her, and asked, "You going to be okay?" "I don't know," she said. "I hope so." I just smiled at her and said, "I see you. I see who you were made to be. You have a beautiful soul."

I think she was taken aback by that. Why is it so rare to hear that kind of good news in our world? If we're in the world, as we are, and if we have a small light, as we do, why are these interactions so unexpected and infrequent?

It was the truth, though. I saw in her eyes, in that moment, behind the tears, not a mere "gas station attendant," but a person made in God's image, made uniquely beautiful, made to shine. When I got to my truck, I prayed that in that small moment she saw the light of the world who illuminates the truth about who she is.

How easy is it, in the midst of life, to let a biting word, a criticism, drive us into a place of darkness? How easy it is to get blinded by a difficult moment to the point that we fail to see the big picture of God's love? As much as we need to hear it, the people God has arranged in the journey of our lives to cross paths with ours, even if briefly at a check out at a gas station, need to hear it, too.

Not every "divine appointment" given to us is going to be in some grand moment, or in Church. Most of those moments happen brief interactions. It doesn't take long to pass on the light, just a moment, but the candle can burn and spread its light beyond what we ever imagined... if only we're willing to let our light shine, if only we're willing to pass the light to the person beside us, and to let it shine into a single life, in the most common of moments.

Finally, remember on the days your own flame feels small: you are in a room full of candles. The fire does not depend on you alone. It never did. The same Christ who is at work in the saints, in the cloud of witnesses, in the person beside you in the pew, is at work in you. Your flame, however small it might seem in the moment, is the very spark that can set the world ablaze.

Pass it on.