Forest Fire The devastating result of Yellowstone National Park’s terrible 1988 fire greeted my family three years ago when we visited the park. Empty stumps still stalked many hillsides, yet in the midst of the charred remnants grew green saplings.

We learned from park rangers how that holocaust benefited Yellowstone’s ecosystem. Much of the park’s forests are composed of lodgepole pines, whose cones are sealed with resin. It takes intense heat to melt the resin, allowing the cones to open and release the seeds inside. Only after such a conflagration are the conditions right for the seedlings to establish themselves on the forest floor, where they access plenty of sunlight without the crowding of other plants and debris.

Just as a blaze can be essential for certain natural processes to occur, it also can bring forth intense spiritual activity. For Blaise Pascal, a “Night of Fire” on November 23, 1654, transformed his entire existence. For two hours he burned with the heat of God’s intimate presence. He drew a crude flaming cross on a scrap of parchment, and around it scribbled a few broken phrases. “From half-past ten till half-past twelve, Fire!”

He kept his experience to himself, sewing the paper into his coat next to his heart. Nine years later, right after his death, a servant found it while sorting through his clothing. Evelyn Underhill calls the memorial of Pascal “one of the strangest ecstatic revelations chronicled in the history of the mystic type.”

She described the rest of his scrap of paper as “but a series of amazed exclamations, crude, breathless words, placed there helter-skelter, the artist in him utterly in abeyance; the names of the overpowering emotions which swept him, one after another, as the Fire of Love disclosed its secrets, evoked an answering flame of humility and rapture in his soul.” His newfound passion led him to enter a monastery and leave behind his life focused on physics and mathematics. His Night of Fire gave birth to joy and a new passion—Jesus.

Likewise, a morning of fiery intensity turned Jesus’ disciples into apostles, delivering a fervor that birthed the Christian church. The Book of Acts tells us,

“And when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.”( Acts 2: 1-4, New American Standard Bible)

The blaze within these early followers of Christ impelled them to ordain a faith that now has more adherents than any other world religion. As we enter Pentecost, may we be filled with the fire and passion of the Holy Spirit to share the love of God with others.

Sources:
http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/technical/fire/ecology.htm http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath558/kmath558.htm
Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, 13th edition. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company Inc., pp. 188-189.

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