My biggest prayer for all 29 participants is that they find and nurture a God Fire that burns deeper than feelings and emotions.
Maintaining spiritual fire in our lives following a renewal weekend is a lot building a campfire. Done correctly, the fire will burn through the night, giving us warmth and light. If it is built incorrectly, it will quickly die out and leave us shivering in the dark and cold.
When Boy Scouts go camping, they use materials like dryer lint or dried leaves as tinder. On top of the tinder, Scouts will build a miniature teepee of twigs and small branches, making sure to position the twigs loosely, to allow wind and air to flow through and stoke the flame. But unless there are fuel logs that catch the flame from the kindling wood (and tinder), the fire will go out. Building a good campfire takes practice and patience.
The same thing applies to faith!
When we return from a men's or women's retreat, a marriage enrichment weekend, or something like Cursillo/A Walk to Emmaus, it is important to build a fire that will last. This starts with how we decide live the Christian life, particularly in the days following our renewal weekend experience.
How do we build a fire that will last? It is not the amount of Bible reading we do or the number of poor and homeless we serve at the shelter. It is not the number of days in a row that we honor a morning devotional. And it is not based on how many people we "save" with the Gospel message.
The thing that will keep our fire burning is our dependence upon the grace of God. If we realize that God loves us unconditionally, no matter what we do in our lives of faith, then we are building a deeper God Fire. This realization of God's unconditional love will lead us to pray regularly, to read our Bible, to attend Sunday services, and to serve the poor, but the best fires are built on our utter dependence upon the grace of God in our lives.
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