God is fire

• God tastes like fire. Hans Hut
• I, the highest and fiery power, have kindled every spark of life. . . . I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows, I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With every breeze, as with invisible life that contains everything, I awaken everything to life. The air lives by turning green and being in bloom. The waters flow as if they were alive. The sun lives in its light, and the moon is enkindled, after its disappearance, once again by the light of the sun so that the moon is again revived. . . . And thus I remain hidden in every kind of reality as a fiery power. Everything burns because of me in the way our breath constantly moves us, like the wind-tossed flame in a fire. Hildegard of Bingen
• You, God, light coals on fire with the love that eventually melts hatred and bitterness from the hearts and minds of those who are full of anger. It will even turn their hatred into tenderness. Catherine of Siena
• God multiplies intelligence, which communicates itself, like fire, ad infinitum. Light a thousand torches at one touch, the flame remains always the same. Joseph Joubert
• Catherine of Siena wrote of her soul being set afire in the furnace of divine love. Gertrude the Great cried out, “Lord, how I want my soul to burn with such fire that it would melt and become a liquid so it could be poured—all of it—into You!” Teresa of Avila described God’s igniting a “fire in the heart” and in the “very fundament of the body,” whereby God “comes to the soul so that the soul, its flesh opened to God, can come to dwell, to dance, in the life of the Triune mystery.” The God who is fire wants to hold our gaze—and indeed, our bodies—as a lover does. Lauren F. Winner
• Maybe, if God is fire, we are a grove of ponderosa pines. Without the heat and burn of God’s flame, our pinecones would remain closed tight around the seeds that are needed for our thriving and growth and new life. Lauren F. Winner
• Fire means love, and fire means suffering. Fire holds the things we need for survival and flourishing, and the promise of destruction. Lauren F. Winner
• “Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord – Jeremiah 23:29a
• A God of fire is the only one there is. Our God is not like an iceberg but like a forest fire. He is never compared to the moon with its cool glow but rather to the sun, radiating warmth. He dwells in the light of the rising sun. Whatever he does shines brightly and is carried out with burning desire and a blazing purpose. Reinhard Bonnke
• God appears as flame again and again in scripture. God reveals God’s self to Moses in the burning bush, and then, centuries later, at the first Pentecost after Jesus’s death, the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples as flame. Those two episodes might be the most familiar flames in scripture, but there are many other instances of God drawing near to people as or in fire: God’s presence as a “flaming torch” in the covenant of Genesis 15; the pillar of fire that leads the Israelites through the wilderness, and God’s glory “like a consuming fire” on Sinai. Lauren F. Winner
• Destitute of the fire of God, nothing else counts; possessing fire, nothing else matters. Samuel Chadwick
• Come, Holy Ghost, all-quick’ning fire. Charles Wesley
• Fire symbolizes the presence of the divine in most of the world’s religions. Lamps and candles shining in the darkness are symbols of God. God is like a light in a dark place. In Exodus, a burning bush that burns but is not consumed alerts Moses to the Divine presence. (Exod. 3.7-14). A column of fire lead Israel by night. When the law was given to Moses, scripture recounts “Now Mount Sinai was wrapped up in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire.” (Exod. 19.18). In the Greek scriptures, John who was baptizing with water told the people that the greater one coming after him “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Mt. 3.11). At Pentecost, after the great wind rushed in, “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2.3-4). The “divided tongues, as of fire” ignited the faith of the disciples and they went out into the whole world. Fr. John P. Arnold
• Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord – Jeremiah 23:29a
• Our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:29
• Now an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses
  in a blazing fire—
  a fire that devours fire;
  a fire that burns in things dry and moist;
  a fire that glows amid snow and ice;
  a fire that is like a crouching lion;
  a fire that reveals itself in many forms;
  a fire that is, and never expires;
  a fire that shines and roars;
  a fire that blazes and sparkles;
  a fire that flies in a storm wind;
  a fire that burns without wood;
  a fire that renews itself every day;
  a fire that is not fanned by fire;
  a fire that billows like palm branches;
  a fire whose sparks are flashes of lightning;
  a fire black as a raven;
  a fire, curled, like the colours of the rainbows!
  Eleazar Ben Kaller
• Lie down in the fire and see and taste the flowing Godhead in your being. Feel the Holy Spirit move in you, compelling you to love God, His fire, and His flowing in many different ways. Mechthild of Magdeburg
• Did God make man in a breath of holy fire, or did he crawl on up out of the muck and mire? Bruce Springsteen

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…a fire that consumes…

• Our God…is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our everlasting joy. Thomas Merton
• Our God is a consuming fire. He consumes pride, lust, materialism, and other sin. Leonard Ravenhill
• The bellows blow fiercely,
  the lead is consumed by the fire;
  in vain the refining goes on,
  for the wicked are not removed.
  They are called “rejected silver,”
  for the LORD has rejected them.
  Jeremiah

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…a wrathful fire…

• Fire is God’s wrath and God’s judgment. Lauren F. Winner
• Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire. Psalm
• As wax melts before the fire, let the wicked perish before God. Psalm
• God’s flame is not all cozy warmth from my fireplace. God’s flame doesn’t always not consume. “For now is the axe put unto the root of the trees, so that every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire,” says one Ash Wednesday liturgy, echoing the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Lauren F. Winner
• For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. “Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord – Jeremiah 23:29a

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…a fire that brings light and warmth…

• When, therefore, our God is compared to fire, is it only because of the more terrible aspects of his nature, which are to be dreaded by transgressors? Is there not also, and perhaps more largely, a suggestion of those beneficent qualities which are needed for our purity and comfort?” Is it not also true, wrote Meyer, that fire is light and warmth? “We talk of ardent desire, warm emotion, enthusiasm’s glow and fire; and when we speak of God’s being within us as fire, we mean that he will produce in us a strong and constant affection to himself. B. Meyer
• God is a fire that warms and kindles the heart and inward parts. Seraphim of Sarov
• You [God] are a fire that takes away the coldness, illuminates the mind with its light, and causes me to know your truth and I know that you are beauty and wisdom itself. The food of angels, you give yourself to man in this fire of your love. Catherine of Siena

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…a fire of love

• In your nature, eternal Godhead, I shall come to know my nature. And what is my nature? It is fire, because you are nothing but a fire of love. And you have given humankind a share in this nature, for by the fire of love you created us. Catherine of Siena
• Love is a divine flame. Catherine of Genoa

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…a regenerative fire

• Fire’s very destructiveness is sometimes regenerative. Fires can clear weaker trees from a forest and therefore allow the healthier, larger trees to flourish. Soil nourished by burned vegetation becomes more nutritious for the trees that remain. Some trees require fire to survive: many “fire-dependent” firs need fire because the pinecones that contain their seeds can only open and let the seeds out if exposed to intense heat. The seeds then find a congenial place to germinate in the beds of ash left after the fires have died down. Could the Bible’s fiery imagery suggest that God’s destruction is regenerative? That God destroys not me but my sin, my hardness of heart, my fear, precisely so that I might be renewed? English mystic Walter Hilton, commenting on Hebrews 12 (“Our God is wasting fire”), proposes this: “God is not elementary fire, that heateth and burneth a body, but God is love and charity. For as fire wasteth all bodily things, that can be wasted, even so the love of God burneth and wasteth all sin out of the soul and maketh it clean, as fire cleanseth all manner of metals. Lauren F. Winner

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Get on fire and burn for God

• God, I pray light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn up for thee. Jim Elliot
• Get on fire for God and men will come and see you burn. John Wesley
• If you want the fire of God, you must become the fuel of God. Tommy Tenney
• God and I have built an immense fire together. We keep each other happy and warm. Hafez
• Spirit filled souls are ablaze for God. They love with a love that glows. They serve with a faith that kindles. They serve with a devotion that consumes. They hate sin with fierceness that burns. They rejoice with a joy that radiates. Love is perfected in the fire of God. Samuel Chadwick
• The revelation of God is the fuel for the fire of our worship. Matt Redman
• It is a coal from God’s altar must kindle our fire; and without fire, true fire, no acceptable sacrifice. William Penn
• Your intelligence is a fire that can illuminate any darkness. Awaken and let your mind burn so brightly! You are alive for a reason! Bryant H. McGill

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Each of us is a spark of the divine

• Each Warrior of the Light contains within him the spark of God. Paulo Coelho
• May the Creator ignite the spark of light within our soul. Lailah Gifty Akita
• His divine spark lives within me, a presence that will never leave. L. LaFevers
• I am the living spark of the divine and no one and nothing can blow out my light. Aimee Davies
• A soul,–a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth. James F. Cooper
• Some praise the Lord for Light, The living spark; I thank God for the Night The healing dark. Robert W. Service
• There is within each of us a divine spark of greatness. Who knows of what we are capable if we only try? Joseph B. Wirthlin
• Strength comes from solitude, a waiting, a communion with the best in us, which is at one with the divine spark. Elbert Hubbard
• All of us contain a divine, expressive spark, a creative candle intended to light our path and that of our fellows. Julia Cameron
• All living creatures are sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance, emerging from God like the rays of the sun. Hildegard of Bingen
• Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God. Isaac Bashevis Singer
• It is the imagination that argues for the Divine Spark within human beings. It is literally a decent of the World’s Soul into all of us. Terence McKenna
• From my point of view, God is the light that illuminates the darkness, even if it does not dissolve it, and a spark of divine light is within each of us. Pope Francis
• I have realised that the Divine is already in everyone and everything. Everything radiates with the spark of Eternity if we have the inner sight to see it.  Aimee Davies
• Know that you are a spark of God and can exist fully only within the realization of that profound truth. As such, you are a light and inspiration to others. Harold Klemp
• We have in us a divine spark that you can see. It’s a Light that shines in the human being. It’s our direct access to truth, our direct access to God. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
• God dropped a spark down into everyone, And if we find and fan it to a blaze, It’ll spring up and glow, like–like the sun, And light the wandering out of stony ways. John Masefield
• Be aware of your own worth, use all of your power to achieve it. Create an ocean from a dewdrop. Do not beg for light from the moon, obtain it from the spark within you. Muhammad Iqbal
• Christ surrounded himself with beggars, prostitutes, tax-collectors and fishermen. … what he meant by this was that the divine spark is in every soul and is never extinguished. Paulo Coelho
• We are here to awaken to the reality of our true identity – that we are sparks of the Eternal Imperishable Spirit, who is the source of all Creation and the very essence of our being. Shriram Sharma
• There is a space of presence within each of us that is all-forgiving, all-accepting and all-loving. This Divine-Spark exists within every living creature. Aimee Davies
• Know that you are a spark of God and can exist fully only within the realization of that profound truth. As such, you are a light and inspiration to others. Harold Klemp
• Be aware of your own worth, use all of your power to achieve it. Create an ocean from a dewdrop. Do not beg for light from the moon, obtain it from the spark within you. Muhammad Iqbal
• Each Warrior of the Light contains within him the spark of God. Paulo Coelho
• I came to believe that my true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play. It transcends the ego. I came to understand that there is an Authentic ‘I’ within – an ‘I Am,’ or divine spark within the soul. Sue Monk Kidd
• Love is the greatest gift from God. It is the divine spark that everywhere produces and restores life. To each and every one of us, love gives us the power to work miracles with your own life and those we touch. Og Mandino
• There is a space of presence within each of us that is all-forgiving, all-accepting and all-loving. This Divine-Spark exists within every living creature and you can become one with it by allowing forgiveness to open your heart. Aimee Davies
• Be of even mind, and say: I am fearless; I am made of the substance of God. I am a spark of the Fire of Spirit. I am an atom of the Cosmic Flame. I am a cell of the vast universal body of the Father. ‘I and my Father are One.’ Paramahansa Yogananda
• If a tiny spark of God’s love already burns within you, do not expose it to the wind, for it may get blown out…. Stay quiet with God. Do not spend your time in useless chatter…. Do not give yourself to others so completely that you have nothing left for yourself. Carlo Borromeo
• Love partakes of the soul itself. it is of the same nature. like it, it is a divine spark, like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable, it is the point of fire which is within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and nothing can extinguish. Victor Hugo
• Some very dull and sad people have genius though the world may not count it as such; a genius for love, or for patience, or for prayer, maybe. We know the divine spark is here and there in the world: who shall say under what manifestations, or humble disguise! Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie
• The selfless love that we give to others, to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them, is all the proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest. We carry within us a divine spark, and if we chose to recognize it, our lives have dignity, meaning, hope. Dean Koontz
• It is not unusual to hear a religious leader, a philosopher, or a poet refer to man as having a divine spark within him. Such characterizations infer that man possesses great abilities and potentials. We are frequently admonished to develop our capabilities, reach out, and set high goals for ourselves. Ezra Taft Benson
• We are all a part of the divine spark. All have a purpose in creation and that purpose is called Love. That love, however, shouldn’t be concentrated in just one person, it should be scattered throughout the world, waiting to be discovered. Wake up that love. What is gone cannot return. What is about to arrive needs to be recognized. Paulo Coelho
• No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light! Jose Rizal
• Focus your awareness on the Divine spark of crystal-white light, sparkling within the center of your stomach area. See or feel this white spark of light, shining like a pilot light within you. This is the spark of your true essence, your shining flame from God. Feel the warmth within you, filling you completely with love and peaceful energy. Doreen Virtue
• In all the people I meet – though some may be governed by the self-centered nature and may not know their potential at all – I see that divine spark. And that’s what I concentrate on. All people look beautiful to me; they look like shining lights to me. I always have the feeling of being thankful for these beautiful people who walk the earth with me. Peace Pilgrim
• It is only in the giving of ourselves to others that we truly live — only with the meeting of our minds — thine and mine — do we become conscious of the divine spark each of us shares — only in sharing in our daily contacts, one with another, in our mutual hopes and fears do we find real peace. The human contribution is the essential ingredient. Ethel Percy Andrus
• We have in us a divine spark that you can see. It’s a Light that shines in the human being. It’s our direct access to truth, our direct access to God. The purpose of all the spiritual practices that exist are to awaken that sparkto give it life, to give it energy, so that it can transform you. One of the energies that comes from that spark is Love. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
• Something magical happens when you begin to love and accept yourself. You start to shine your light again. You realise that you are connected to a deeper Self, a divine spark within. This divine spark is the light of your inner awareness, illuminating all your life experiences, and when you sink back and rest in it, as it, it is felt as a sense of pure aliveness and joy. Aimee Davies
• Sooner or later all mankind will realize that the greatest cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrow and crimes of humanity rests solely in acts of love. Love is the greatest gift from God. It is the divine spark that everywhere produces and restores life. To each and every one of us, love gives us the power to work miracles with your own life and those we touch. Og Mandino
• His divine spark lives within me, a presence that will never leave. And I am but one of many tools He has at His disposal. If I cannot act – if I refuse to act – that is a choice I am allowed to make. He has given me life, and all I must do to serve Him is to live. Fully and with my whole heart. With this knowledge comes a true understanding of all the gifts He has given me. L. LaFevers
• We need less posturing and more genuine charisma. Charisma was originally a religious term, meaning “of the spirit” or “inspired.” It’s about letting God’s light shine through us. It’s about a sparkle in people that money can’t buy. It’s an invisible energy with visible effects. To let go, to just love, is not to fade into the wallpaper. Quite the contrary, it’s when we truly become bright. We’re letting our own light shine. Marianne Williamson
• The Kabbalah speaks of sparks of divine light that were trapped in the husks of all things in the universe when this material world was created. The purpose of life is to raise the sparks, and bring together the separated light into one whole. Part of how we do this is through becoming aware of the larger whole. But what makes humans significant is that we exist with free will. So not only are we a part of the harmonious symphony of the all, but we can actively shape the music. Whatever we choose has an effect on the larger whole. Myke Johnson

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Each soul is a flame…

• Don’t fear the light within. May it ignite the Sacred Flame in your soul. Paulo Coelho
• For what is man’s soul but a flame? It flickers in and around the body of a man as does the flame around the rough log. Selma Lagerlöf
• I feel the flame of eternity in my soul. Helen Keller
• If the flame inside you goes out, the souls that are next to you will die of cold. Francois Mauriac
• Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts. Leo Tolstoy
• Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire / Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire. Arthur Symons
• Our secret thoughts – do they ever show up? The small flame of our soul can be burning hot, but no one comes to its warmth. Passersby see only a small whiff going through the chimney. Don’t we need to take care of that flame, cherish it and patiently wait until someone will come and sit at it, do we? Irving Stone
• The divine awakening produces in the soul of the perfect a flame of love. John of the Cross
• The tiny flame that lights up the human heart is like a blazing torch that comes down from heaven to light up the paths of mankind. For in one soul are contained the hopes and feelings of all Mankind. Khalil Gibran
• Think of a space in your heart, and in the midst of that space think that a flame is burning. Think of that a flame is burning. Think of that flame as your own soul and inside the flame is another effulgent light, and that is the Soul of your soul, God. Meditate upon that in the heart. Swami Vivekananda

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…little flames coming from the big flame of life

• We are a part of the divine Christ Consciousness present in all creation. Each individual intelligence is a part of that vast Christ Intelligence. We are like the jets in the burner of a gas stove. There are many little holes through which the flames are pouring, but under the burner there is only one flame. We are little flames coming from the big flame of Life. Beneath all the tiny jets of human life is One Life; behind the flowers, behind all nature, is One Life. Paramahansa Yogananda