Preaching Daily - December 17

Today's Devotional Insight...

Playing with Fire

Vic Pentz

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a look of relief as I saw on the face of a couple leaving church a week ago. It seemed they were driving around when their cell phone rang. It was their panicked neighbor telling them that she had smelled smoke, had gone to the couple’s house, and their Christmas tree was on fire. It turned out they were just a couple blocks away, so they tore home. If they had been a minute later, their house would have gone up in flames. As it is, they only have to repaint a wall.

As the child of a firefighter, I had one lesson drilled into me again and again and again and again: Don’t play with fire.

In a sense, you might say I’ve gone into the same line of work as my dad. Whether the flames of hell turn out to be literal or figurative, the message from the pulpits is: Do not take lightly the eternal commands of God. Don’t play with fire.

There are certain things we call playing with fire. If you poke a stick at a pit bull, if you leave a loaded gun lying around the house, if you ask a married person out on a date, it’s just not smart. You are playing with fire.

Then it struck me that here at Peachtree on Christmas Eve, thousands of us come into this building to play with fire. In our hugest numbers of the year, we come together having donned our most festive clothing, with our hearts filled with cheer and joy, surrounding ourselves with the people we love most in life, on a night when there’s a fight for seats unlike any other night of the year. The climax of this magical evening is a moment when we play with fire.

It’s not just us pyro-Presbyterians. Millions and millions of Christians around the globe this evening are flocking into darkened cathedrals, sitting in clapboard meeting houses, huddling on sofas behind closed shades in living rooms, all to play with fire.

(Read the full article here.)

Today’s Pastoral Resource...

Preaching Media

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