Writers 
They tossed three men into a furnace
turned up seven times hotter than mercy
thinking they'd expect ash,
expect silence,
expect the story to end there
as stories of faith have a way of ending
in the telling, where others watch, and keep score.
But the fourth man walked with them into the fire
not consuming them, but walking with them
turning possible destruction to the oddest of shelters
the oddest of shelters anyone has ever seen.
I think of this when my furnace is turned up
the diagnosis, the letter, the year
are all expecting me to be ash.
I forget, but You never leave me in the heat.
There is a kind of faith that only appears
when the threat of fire is hypothetical
when trust is easy, the flames imagined.
But there is a faith that's actual, but hard
faith that names Your name even higher
as the flames ascend, and deliverance seems less likely
and there's no evidence but Your presence
and I am learning the difference between
a God who keeps me from every fire
and a God who walks with me through the ones he allows
and the second is not so much like abandonment,
perhaps.
Let the furnace do its work.
Let it burn off the things that are not truly mine,
the fears, the performances, some borrowed doubts
and when this is done, I'll not be ash.
I won't smell of smoke, because there is a fourth man in this fire,
and he has never left my hand.
