The finger-height flame flickers with fresh fire. Candles get lighted all the time but this one is different, this one fires up the heart of anyone who sees it because this candle– it’s something different, it’s for a purpose, for an art.
The art of story telling.
The narrative has continued, and the author is delightfully sharpening his quill as He waits for his small kindle to gain strength. Flame floats with fair glee, dancing with the drafts of wind in its room, almost like Peter Pan chasing his Shadow in the nursery. The candle waits for the ink to be ready, for the nib to be dipped in that liquid love– a romance of the page between pen and paper. Ink, the joining together of words and reality.
It’s funny when you post something online and you think you’ve “got it covered”, but it takes a question on a Facebook comment to bring you back to reality, to remember where you actually are on your journey. Yes, thank you Mia Jackson for asking the question even my heart had forgotten!– yes, I know the problem now, I need to rekindle my flame, to recharge, to be refueled… but how do I do it? How do I, like a dying wick, receive a flame again? How do I tell others to do the same?
Of course it was her, the reader, who reminded me of the answer. Oh, the brilliance of God and His story! When readers and writers and listeners and speakers all conjoin in this cacophony of community. If the vision was “Kayla Norris please have all the answers”, then not knowing what to say would be embarrassing. Yet I think what’s more powerful is when one has a question, another has an answer– leader or follower, it doesn’t matter– and we carry each other in this beautiful mess “with a certain kind of community that bands together to scale the rugged peaks” (Larry Crabb, Connecting).
“What fills your tank?” I typed very non-spiritually, thinking of me curled up on my window seat and reading Anne of Green Gables books or going on a walk to the forest (which certainly end up with revelations with Jesus but you can ask me about that later!). Mia– incredible woman of God she is, and still so down-to-earth, replies from Australia, “The Word”. I mean, how good is that?! How soothingly slapping is that, from YWAM kid to YWAM kid, to be reminded of “The Book That Transforms Nations“?!
And I find myself immersed in Psalm 37 today, because Donna prayed that over me at Hope Centre yesterday, and just feeding on the Word was doing something in my spirit that my consciousness was not fully aware of.
I mean, when you get FOOD, you don’t feel full or energized right away and you certainly don’t glean all the nutrients from it until it’s fully digested. And I suppose sometimes we forget that the Bible is one steaming plate-laden, bowl-crowded potluck of books and chapters and stories, which means you can’t eat it all at once! (Coming from Hawaii, potluck capital of the world, we could argue this inability. But let’s leave that on the shelf for now!). Anyway, my point was that sometimes we gotta just get out of our safe little bento-boxes and just TRY something, trusting that it WILL fill us and sustain us.
What was gobbling up Psalm 37 doing for my heart? Well, for one, I was realizing that as I commit myself to God, He will act. I don’t need to self-preserve, or figure out stuff on my own. I don’t need to write my own story! He’s got that covered.
Wow.
And with that, Mia is right. The word.
What fills our tank can look as different as how many giftings and talents there are in this world. For me, it’s linguistic and books and so on and so forth. For others, reading would be the worst thing ever. And if you have made it this far through this blog post and books scare you? I AM SO PROUD OF YOU (this is my teacher excitement voice coming on, apologies). So don’t worry about that. But do know that whatever its medium… the Word of God is what will sustain you,
…rekindling that fire you had before.
Dear Child,
I made you to be mine.
I want you to read my letter,
wherever it is,
whether it is on a blog post
or a tree trunk
painted on an art piece
or splashed on a sunset–
read my word.
So let us end (for today) the song we all have sung countless times til it almost lost its meaning…
Set a fire down in my soul
That I can’t contain,
That I can’t control
I want more of you, God,
I want more of you, God!
May the meaning may not be lost again today.
I love you all.
Photo: Thanksgiving 2009, Mum’s handwriting.
(The woman who taught me to love the Word of God by loving it herself).
