Incense

We had our first service of prayer and fasting a few Wednesdays ago. Not bad—6 of us, and a few more would have been there, but we had some things come up that kept folks away. I think it will be a challenging service because it is centered on two difficult things for an American culture (I don’t just mean U.S.!!!): fasting and being silent. It’s a thirty minute service, but 15-20 minutes of it will be silence. Today it was Curtis and me, and we prayed and then had some dueling psalms, and prayed for our mutual burden: the people of God living out their faith in our neighborhood.

I have been busting out my censer during the prayer and fasting service. I light it and walk through the room, thinking about prayer and the time of incense in the Israelite religion, and how the Hebrew word sacrifice merges into the word for “rise up,” as in the smoke of incense or burnt sacrifice rising up to God. The golden bowls of incense in Revelation 5, which are the prayers of the saints, also comes to mind.

At one point I had to put some more incense on (still learning burn rates, etc) and I noticed something that fascinated me. Frankincense comes as powdered, different-sized clusters. But as it burns, it starts to look carmelized, bubbled, a new solid shape. It had to be refined by fire, had to be transformed and twisted to release its fragrance, to become something beyond useful: beautiful, sacramental.

Melissa was talking about this a few days ago, thinking about where does this illness/recovery lead? What is the end? Not that you are looking at it like it’s something intended to happen, but how do you let God take what the evil one meant for harm and turn it to good? What will be released by coming through this?