A local citizen tested his pastor with the following question: "If you know so much about God, tell me what this is," as he held up a lighted match. "I mean, what is flame and what is fire? Explain it to me."

"Well," puzzled the preacher, "we are told it is conversion of energy, of power and of substance changing from one form to another. We know it serves mankind, but wrongly used can be of great destruction."

Perhaps the action of fire, which worshipers of ancient times used to worship as God itself, does reveal something of what God in His marvelous power continues to do in so many ways. The refiner's fire or the purger's fire, which Jesus mentioned, was to cleanse the soul and remove the dross. While the fire burns, the original fuel disintegrates and the material takes on new form, though perhaps unseen.

Physicists tell us that no energy, nothing is ever lost. It merely changes from solid to liquid or gas and new growth and development is the reverse process. So, too, we may also see something of the working of heaven in the flame of the spirit as in death we change from the earthly body to the unseen spiritual body and we recognize that God is at work in all things.