In Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize novel, The Road, a father takes his young son on foot across an ash-covered United States after some vast but unnamed catastrophe. They have to avoid bands of cannibals on their way to the sea, where they hope to find a livable climate and maybe some ragtag remnant of a civilized society.
It’s one of my favorite novels because in all the bleakness there shines a stubborn ray of hope. Throughout the novel the father and son remind each other that they “carry the fire.” That simple phrase shows up in four scenes of the short book, including the ending.
“How can you have faith like that?”
Do you carry the fire? For the Christian, to carry the fire means to keep going despite hard times. To carry the fire means to stubbornly trust that God knows what he’s doing in your bewildering heartbreak. To carry the fire means to choose the narrow path of obedience and faithfulness when the wide path is easier and more popular. We say with the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
That’s what it means to carry the fire.
How can you have faith like that? When you build a fire, it starts with a spark sputtering in the kindling, then a few tongues of flame lick at the sticks, and finally it rises to a bright and welcome blaze. We can see faith growing like that in John 4:46-53. It’s a story of a desperate man’s faith going from spark to flame to bright blaze. If you want better faith, read the story and join us this Sunday to study it with me.
Two more things. First, I recommend Andrew Peterson’s song, “Carry the Fire,” inspired by McCarthy’s novel. Here’s the song and here’s his story behind the song. Second, I designed The Anchor Course to introduce people to the fire worth carrying. I’m hosting an online version of the course in April and May. Find out about it here.
--Tom
Sign up here to receive Tom Goodman’s weekly devotional in your email inbox. Tom serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter.