Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

Our Pastor

Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

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The Spiritual Life

September 1999

The burning flame of God's Spirit

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

The burning flame of God's Spirit, like diamonds in the rough is often hard to see in our everyday life. You have to look hard to see it dancing with deep flame in your hand, and Isn't it like God to flash it on you when your looking the other-way. Like the treasure found in the field, all I was looking for was weeds and maybe a wild flower and I found rubies burning in the light. But God often does that. My latest rough cut diamond of insight and soul warming openness to the flame that is God's love happened, like it so often does in my life, with the coincidence and after a moment to reflect on what I had seen but not understood at the time.

I was visiting and after dinner was invited to see a video. They had rented "Spitfire Grill". I knew nothing at all about the film, and was tired, but out of politeness I agreed to watch part of it before I had to get home. (Sometimes I say very silly things). I watch the entire movie, moving deeper and deeper into it, till it was late indeed before I got home and to sleep. But what I saw was the beauty of a real, ordinary life, with flaws and pain, demonstrate the Spiritual reality that underlies ordinary life and makes it heroic. How an ordinary life can bring insight and redemption to people lost in small lives of loneliness and fear and how one who is least and lost can be that agent of God's healing to others. It wasn't overt. It wasn't even obvious, but diamonds look like rocks in the stream bed, before polishing and cutting. But even before they flash, they are still diamonds, and how ever humble or unworthy, when people speak for God and bring healing to broken lives, they are God's messengers, God's Angels, to a broken world. And in that moment of time they speak with the Word that carries with it the both the roar of thunder and sounds of birds singing with joy in the morning they are speaking with the voice of God. For God is always more than what I expect or look for. "Percy" or Perchance Talbot, the heroin of the movie is only an ordinary young woman, little more than a girl who has seen much more than her share of pain, but is determined to keep trying and to reach out to those around her. It is her commitment to being human and demanding others be human as well that opens those around her to the touch of Christ, to the touch that will change their lives and bring healing of the wounds that keep them so far apart from each other. What she did, was not different that what we could do, or what God could do though our lives. Her great act of courage was refusing to give up, her refusal to accept the labels others placed on her or become something less than her best self.

I was talking with my dad and were talking about what a blessing all the kids here at Olive Crest are. Especially the Children's Choir. He said, "You can't ever give up, because when ever you look at a child you see the inspiration to never lose heart." (at least it was close to that, my memory being what it is) Later I was thinking about it and trying to put it into visual language. I could see myself getting tired, wanting to lay down in despair and just give up struggling to do the right thing, then looking behind me to see a child following in my footsteps. Knowing that my choices are not for my life alone. My decisions lead those children who follow along behind me, they are going on the same road and same place I am, and I never want any child to end up in a lonely dark place. So I have to get up and keep going, because children, most of whom I don't know, are following in my footsteps. That is a true vision of fire and burning spirit.

That is part of what I saw happening in the "Spitfire Grill" movie and what I see that inspires me when I look at the quite courage of people around me here where I live. Our lives make differences far beyond anything we can see, as our examples echo down into time. As the Book says, "...good done in the name of the Lord is never done in vain." And all have that opportunity to experience the wonder of speaking for God and bring healing to the broken world around you. But it will not be easy. Not the least because we expect it to look different, when miracles most often happen in our ordinary real world, rather than with flashy special effects. Another barrier is the world we move in. There is an active resistance to healing and the peace of God.

From page 44 of SoulTsunami by Leonard Sweet "Spitfire Grill is a movie about a young woman who brings spiritual redemption to a small town in Maine. Even though it cost only $6.1 million to make, Castle Rock liked it enough to buy it for $10 million. It premiered at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, where it was early on the most popular movie at the festival, winning the Audience Award for drama. Then chaos erupted. Sundance attendees found out that the financing, production, and marketing of the movie came from Gregory Productions, a company owned by a Roman Catholic order of priests. Instead of raising money for their order by baking bread or making trinkets, the Priests of the Sacred Heart decided to venture-capital family-friendly movies the promote "Judeo-Christian values". The profits would go to their charitable works- including health care for children and AIDS counseling. Spitfire Grill, with its Catholic backers, Protestant characters, and Jewish director, has had a hard time of it. It has been attacked for its "hidden message," and its "outside agenda". Castle Rock has been castigated for buying the film, and Disney, which initially showed an interest in distributing Spitfire Grill, dropped it like a hot potato."

All they saw was a rock in the stream bed, not a diamond, but the diamond was still there. We look around at our lives and think we are nothing special, but we are breathing clouds of fiery Holy Spirit and pulsing with the heartbeat of God. It just looks so ordinary we don't' take the time to look. Take a moment to look at your value before God and never give up. In God, our lives do make a difference.

Your brother-in-Christ, Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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