God's grace lives and breaths in a consuming fire that burns up our declarations of independence. To receive grace is to lose all the merits and demerits we've been propping ourselves up with all these years. To receive grace is to be stripped bare with no safe place to find shelter. To receive grace is to sit in the flames of God and be scorched in the holy. But who among us would face such heat of our own volition. None, of course. We are driven to grace, backed in against our natural wills. In loss, in sorrow, in failure, in regret, we finally give in. Our clutching fingers loosen. Our shouts to be spared fade like vapor. And there, in that quiet surrender, as the flames engulf our bodies and lick at our poisoned flesh, we see him. Jesus, the Christ of God, standing there in holy fire. He is the Son of Fire, a whole person forged in divine grace. And he is speaking to us now: "My grace is sufficient for you."