Fire

Lately, it has been hot. Not simply uncomfortable, but brutal. The kind of heat that sits on your shoulders and follows you into every corner of the shop. At the end of the day I ride home, thankful for the breeze moving across a sweat-soaked shirt, but carrying a level of exhaustion I have not felt in years. Not ordinary tiredness, but the complete and utter exhaustion of leaving your heart on the field.

For the last several weeks, production work has meant ten- and twelve-hour days, six days a week, under relentless heat and relentless pressure. There has not been much room for imagination, only the next step. The next tool. The next handle. The next edge. The next box. The next deadline. In the middle of that toil, I have found myself talking to God often, asking a question that feels ancient: what is all this for?

In the beginning, after the failure of man, God responded with a curse. The ground would resist him. Food would still come, but only through sweat, thorns, and toil. Work itself was not the curse; Adam had worked before the fall. But after sin entered the world, work became burdened. The relationship between man, labor, and provision was fractured, and survival became anxious.

Juxtapose that against the image of Israel in the wilderness. A people pulled out of slavery, away from the brick kilns of Egypt and the storehouses of empire, were led into a barren place where survival no longer came from their own production. Every morning, manna appeared. They gathered enough for the day. Not enough for a month. Not enough for a season. Not enough to build a storehouse and quiet their fear. Enough for the day. Any attempt to hold tomorrow’s portion today would spoil.

God was teaching them dependence, and it drove them mad.

The wilderness was freedom, but it did not feel like freedom. Egypt had been slavery, but it had been predictable. There were pots of meat there,  bread enough to remember. The old life had crushed them, but at least it had told them what tomorrow would require. Freedom removed that certainty, and their hearts kept reaching backward toward the security of bondage.

I understand that more now than ever. I have heard this place called “the middle,” and I have written about it before. The strange stretch between what was and what will be, the wilderness between Egypt and promise. It is a season where identity is stripped down, devotion tested, and daily provision becomes more than a theological idea. It becomes the whole thing.

And still, my heart cries out, “Where is the margin?” Where are the storehouses of Egypt? Where is the security that promises survival for all foreseeable life? There is a part of me that wants toil because toil quiets the anxious heart. A crushing day of labor pushes every fear into the background. When the body is exhausted, the mind finally gives up. All attention turns toward rest, food, repair, and sleep. The day has demanded everything, and there is comfort in having nothing left to give.

This week is the big push to the finish line after weeks of hard work. I am awaiting the refresh of Monday morning, when the work will be packed on a truck and sent across the country. There will be relief in that. The labor of these weeks will leave my hands and begin serving someone else. And yet, my heart is not dwelling on the rest that will come after the push. It is already dwelling on the quiet that will remain after the surge is gone.

Then what?

What is next? What will ensure my survival for the following week, the following month, the following year? Today I am exhausted and yearning for rest, but I know myself well enough to know that when Monday comes, my anxious heart will begin yearning for the toil again. Not because the work was easy, but because the work felt secure. A full month of production gives the mind something to grip. It says, “Here is what matters. Here is what must be done. Here is the provision you can see.”

Quiet does not do that. 

This is the tension of consciously choosing to abandon the Egypt of society and rely on God to move me through the wilderness. Not a wilderness of punishment, but a wilderness of formation. A place where the daily portion is enough because God says it is enough. A place where the task is not to build storehouses against every possible fear, but to gather what has been given for today and receive it with faithful satisfaction.

That is not easy. I want the storehouse. I want the purchase orders lined up, the bank account full, the future tamed, the risk named and conquered. But God seems far more interested in my heart than in my illusion of control.

All that I have built will be tested by fire. Not all of it will remain. Some of it will burn away because it was never strong enough to carry what I hoped it would. Some of it will burn because it was built from fear, ambition, or self-reliance. Fire has a way of revealing what things really are.

That sounds frightening until I remember that fire does not only destroy. Fire refines, burns away what does not belong. Heat makes steel willing to move. Pressure gives it shape. Quenching fixes what the fire has prepared. Tempering draws the brittleness out so the tool can finally be useful.

Perhaps this season is doing the same in me. The heat, the toil, the exhaustion, the fear of quiet, the longing for storehouses, and the daily manna are all revealing what I have been trusting.

If I am honest, it has not been God. I have trusted momentum, production, usefulness, deadlines, and the visible progress of a stack of finished tools. The wilderness is teaching me that provision is not the same as control. Enough for today is still enough.

So perhaps the faithful act in a season like this is not to conquer the unknown, but to place my heart in eager anticipation of it. To say, even with a tired body and an anxious mind, that I will receive today’s portion and trust tomorrow’s Giver. To stop demanding that God calm my fear with storehouses and instead allow Him to quiet my heart with Himself.

That may be the real work before me; learning how to be free. Free from Egypt. Free from the anxious need to secure every outcome. Free from the belief that success is the only proof of faithfulness. Free to gather enough for today, rest when the work is done, and step into the quiet without demanding that it explain itself.

That is my hope, and perhaps it is yours as well. That we might learn to live in a world demanding fastidious storehouses of worthless security and still look instead to the One who breathed life into dust, led His people through the wilderness, provided bread for the day, and refines by fire: not to destroy what He loves, but to make it true.

Today, I am tired. The shop is hot. The work is heavy. The future is uncertain.

But there is manna enough for today.

And for today, that is enough.