The Flame and the Match

Change is constant.

The soul is eternal.

Imagine a candle burning in a dark room.

For a while, there is a flame.

It has a shape.
It moves.
It gives warmth.
It gives light.

Then the candle is spent.

The flame goes out.

Smoke rises from the wick and disperses into the air.

The physical flame is gone.

But the flame was never the source of the fire.

The flame was the visible expression of something deeper: fuel, energy, ignition, and the hand that struck the match.

So when the flame goes out, the One who lit it remains.

God holds the match.

That is what the soul is.

The body is the candle.

This life is the burning.

The personality is the particular shape the flame takes while it burns.

The flame changes constantly.

The soul does not.

We see.
We remember.
We imagine.
We love.
We reason.
We choose.
We recognize beauty.
We ask why we exist.

These faculties are not meaningless accidents.

They are the faculties of the soul.

The Creator gave us consciousness because consciousness has purpose.

The Creator gave us reason because reason can seek truth.

The Creator gave us love because love reaches beyond the isolated self.

And the Creator gave us the ability to look upward and ask where the light came from.

For me, that light is represented by Ra, by Christ, and by the mystery behind the Sun.

The Sun sustains life.

Its light reaches us every day.

Yet stare directly into it and it blinds you.

Stand beneath its power long enough and it can burn you.

The same light that gives life is beyond what the human eye can safely contain.

That is the image I see when I think of God.

The source of the light is greater than the light we can comprehend.

Christian scripture describes God as dwelling in unapproachable light.

Ancient Egypt gave the solar mystery the name Ra.

Christ spoke of the Father and of light.

Different civilizations reached toward the same enormous mystery with different languages.

But the question remains:

What is the source of the flame?

The answer is God.

And when our particular flame goes out, God has not ceased to exist.

The body ends.

The candle is spent.

The smoke disperses.

But the Creator remains.

And the soul belongs to the Creator.

The flame was never supposed to burn forever in this physical form.

The soul is eternal.

Change is constant.

The flame changes.

The candle changes.

The body changes.

The world changes.

But the soul is.

And behind the soul is the One who gave it existence.

The One who struck the match.

The One who holds it still.

God holds the match.

This is the simple truth, a snap of the fingers, you are awake from your sleep.