Dry wood

We are dry wood, and the Word of God is fire.

Everything in us aches to be burned by that Fire, to be transformed from mere sticks into bright light.

Why we are not transformed is because
we do not let the Fire near us.

Our holy and divine ancestors, the saints of all times, were most of them unable to read or write, yet they were saved by coming to the divine services and hearing the Word of God, seeing it in the ikons, feeling it engulf them in the liturgy. Like men drowning in the tempestuous seas who find a piece of wreckage tossed about, they grabbed onto it and held fast, and the currents brought them at last safely to shore.

And here we are, we can hold the written ikon of the Word, the precious and all-divine and only Holy Scripture, the Bible, in our hands, our eyes can see the letters, our lips read the words, and our minds understand them, by day or by night, alone or in a crowd.

Yet we hide ourselves from the Book who is a Man who walks among us unobserved by our lack of desire, while we speak of faith and feel justified by our works, all of them worthy in our eyes, but worthless because we use them as Adam used the bushes to hide from his divine Lover.

We are dry wood, that is the weakness of our nature,
and dry wood is made for the Fire.

Come, brothers, let us run to the Word brighter than all created things, Himself the Creator and Lord of all, the Almighty, and let ourselves catch fire from Him. That is what He made us for.

As He spoke at the beginning, so He speaks at the end,
'Let there be Light.'

There was evening, and there was morning, one Day.