{"id":26423,"date":"2026-01-20T09:04:52","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T14:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26423"},"modified":"2026-01-20T09:29:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T14:29:58","slug":"26423","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26423","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">God Calls Those on the Margins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sinach - Way Maker with lyrics (Gospel)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DFGDU3XZmms?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Tuesday, January 20, 2026\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>She was an Egyptian slave in a foreign land away from her people and seemingly without anyone\u2019s protection. But God knew Hagar and God called on her to be a part of [God\u2019s] plan.<br>\u2014Marjorie A. White,&nbsp;<em>The Five Books of Moses<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Womanist theologian Delores Williams (1937\u20132022) connects the call Hagar experienced in the wilderness to the experiences of African American women.&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although many themes in African-American women\u2019s history correspond with many themes in Hagar\u2019s story in the Bible, nothing links the two women together more securely than their religious experiences in the wilderness [see Genesis 21]\u2026. Many African-American slave women have left behind autobiographies telling how they would slip away to the wilderness or to \u201cthe hay-stack where the presence of the Lord overshadowed\u201d them. [1] Some of them governed their lives according to their mothers\u2019 counsel that they would have \u201cnobody in the wide world to look to but God\u201d [2]\u2014as Hagar in the final stages of her story had only God to look to\u2026.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For many black Christian women today, \u201cwilderness\u201d or \u201cwilderness-experience\u201d is a symbolic term used to represent a near-destruction situation in which God gives personal direction to the believer and thereby helps her make a way out of what she thought was no way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Williams points to God\u2019s support for Hagar as an ongoing source of inspiration and courage:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the biblical story Hagar\u2019s wilderness experience happened in a desolate and lonely wilderness where she\u2014pregnant, fleeing from the brutality of her slave owner, Sarai, and without protection\u2014had religious experiences that helped her and her child survive when survival seemed doomed. For both Hagar and the&nbsp;African-American&nbsp;women, the wilderness experience meant standing utterly alone,&nbsp;in the midst of&nbsp;serious trouble, with only God\u2019s support to rely upon.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>As the result of these hard-time experiences and the encounters with God<\/strong>, Hagar and many African-American women<strong> manifested a risk-taking faith<\/strong>. Though she obeyed God\u2019s mandate for her life, Hagar dared to give a name to the God she met in the wilderness. In a sense, this God is&nbsp;<em>her<\/em>&nbsp;God, and possibly not&nbsp;the God of her slave holders Abram and Sarai. No other person in the Bible names God. Many&nbsp;African-American women (slave and free) have taken serious risks in the black community\u2019s liberation struggle.&nbsp;For example, in the midst of the violence and brutality that accompanied slavery in America, Harriet Tubman, with a price on her head, dared to liberate over three hundred slaves.&nbsp;She served as a spy and a general in the Civil War. She is said to have relied solely upon God for help and strength; she had no one else to look to. Thus <strong>we can speak of Hagar and many&nbsp;African-American women as sisters in the wilderness struggling for life, and by the help of their God coming to terms with situations that have destructive potential<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>===========================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/app-link\/post?publication_id=2863497&amp;post_id=185083523&amp;utm_source=post-email-title&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=true&amp;r=2dkj2&amp;token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozOTkyMzY2LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxODUwODM1MjMsImlhdCI6MTc2ODg0MjYyNSwiZXhwIjoxNzcxNDM0NjI1LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjg2MzQ5NyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.Cp0hza28bPUL5FXP_Gx9Xr8qgcrWWdxpubzvX_Aocmw\">Heavenly Fire &#8211; Bradley Jersak<\/a><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Evolving Imagery in Cultural and Biblical Context<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td>JAN 19<\/td><td><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@bradleyjersak124315\"><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td>&nbsp;<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>&nbsp;<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><\/td><td><\/td><td><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost a decade ago, I came across the citation from St Athanasius (via&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/creativeorthodox.com\/\">creativeorthodox.com<\/a>) that beautifully compares the resurrection of Christ to a fire that completely consumes death as if it were dry straw. The comparison reminded me of the range and frequent use of fire as imagery associated with the person or acts of God. A brief survey serves as a healthy meditation, not only on the various comparisons, but also how these evolve with our illumination by the Spirit, who is also linked with fire at times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ancient peoples would have experienced&nbsp;<strong>fire as destruction<\/strong>&nbsp;before they ever learned to employ it for light or heat, and when fire would fall from heaven as lightning or burst from the earth via volcanoes. Our forefathers connected the dots between destructive fire and the person and wrath of God. They assumed the fire that devours was sent by God as punishment, as we see in biblical stories like the end of Sodom and Gomorrah. When that fire is used against one\u2019s enemies, it could serve as a powerful vindication that God is on \u2018our side\u2019 \u2014 as in 1 Kings 18 in Elisha\u2019s showdown with the prophets of Baal or 2 Kings 1 when he calls for fire to kill Ahaziah\u2019s troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But fire was not only seen as destructive. We have other passages where fire is employed for its&nbsp;<strong>cleansing properties<\/strong>. Malachi regards the judgements of God as a gold refiner\u2019s furnace, purging the gold or silver of \u2018dross\u2019 or impurities. Similarly, Paul in 1 Cor. 3 describes the fire of God consuming all that is combustible in us \u2026 poor motives and faulty agendas, for example, as if they were wood, hay and stubble. But again, this is only so the gold, silver and precious stones of our true selves will shine brightly through the old tarnish. Hebrews 12 says that God himself IS this consuming fire. So in the end, the destructive fire is to be welcomed, even if seen as a<strong>&nbsp;\u2018trial by fire.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A third sense of&nbsp;<strong>fire is associated with the person and work of the Holy Spirit<\/strong>. We hear from John the Baptist that Christ will baptize with the Spirit and with fire, and while I suspect John was thinking of judgement, the New Testament sees that promise fulfilled with the outpouring of the Spirit in tongues of fire on Pentecost. This divine fire not only cleanses but&nbsp;<strong>empowers,<\/strong>&nbsp;and gives those who receive it the properties of fire (symbolically light and heat), which is to say, the Spirit&nbsp;<em>inhabits us with glory, transfiguring us from glory to glory<\/em>, so that we can stand in that glory which is&nbsp;<strong>the passionate love of Christ himself.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of the early church fathers used the image of a sword being&nbsp;<strong>forged<\/strong>&nbsp;in the intense heat that makes for the highest quality steel. Placed in the flames, it\u2019s not that the steel would become other than steel, but while in the flames, it would bear the heat and glow with the light of the fire itself. So it is, they said, with those forged in the fire of God\u2019s Spirit. Thus, <strong>the fire was not destructive, but rather instructive and constructive of our&nbsp;participation in the divine nature.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many \u2018what about this questions\u2019 that attend divine fire analogies. What about those parables of Jesus where unfruitful branches are cut off and thrown into the fire? Or when the wheat and tares are separated by angels and the weeds thrown into the fire. Rather than skirting the force of these texts too quickly, we need to undergo their message \u2014 their fire. Such parables remind us of the same point Lewis makes by using lion imagery for Christ. <strong>God is \u2018good\u2019 but he\u2019s hardly \u2018safe,\u2019 much less \u2018tame,\u2019 if by that we imagine we can domesticate God!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in saying this, let us also assert the<strong> first point as most important<\/strong>. <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">God is good. God is love. <\/span><\/strong>And thus, for all its other properties,&nbsp;<strong>the Divine Fire is the unquenchable Flame of Love<\/strong>&nbsp;(also pictured by the Sun) \u2014&nbsp;<strong>the One who radiates the Light and Warmth of Love to those coming in from the cold, dark night of winter.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>God Calls Those on the Margins Tuesday, January 20, 2026\u00a0 She was an Egyptian slave in a foreign land away from her people and seemingly without anyone\u2019s protection. But God knew Hagar and God called on her to be a part of [God\u2019s] plan.\u2014Marjorie A. White,&nbsp;The Five Books of Moses Womanist theologian Delores Williams (1937\u20132022) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26423"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26423"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26430,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26423\/revisions\/26430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}