Up in Smoke
Up in Smoke
Judges 13:20
And when the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the angel of the LORD went up in the flame of the altar. Now Manoah and his wife were watching, and they fell on their faces to the ground.
Theologians offer numerous linguistic and exegetical reasons for why we should interpret this Angel of the LORD as a preincarnate appearance of Jesus Himself, but there’s a simpler, less academic reason that leaves me with little doubt: the likeness of His coming and going.
Upon seeing this divine Messenger disappear in a flame and then watching Samson’s dumbstruck parents fall to their faces, I found myself raptured from one Testament to another, from Judges 13 all the way to Luke 24, and then landing on a dirt road to Emmaus where two confused disciples have just begun walking with a Stranger. I’m swept up in the conversation, listening intently as this Stranger gives an Old Testament survey of Moses and the Prophets and reveals how they’ve pointed to the Messiah’s suffering, death, and resurrection from the beginning. Then, seven miles in, our hearts aglow from the message, we stop for dinner, and watch the Stranger take a loaf of bread in His hands; yet, as soon as He breaks it, our eyes are opened to Who He is! And upon that revelation, instantaneously, He vanishes into thin air as quickly as He’d come, leaving us dumbstruck but with hearts ablaze.
This isn’t as precise a word as I’d like to use, friend, but don’t you appreciate the whimsy of our LORD’s coming and goings in our lives of faith? There’s so much unpredictability about them. He can meet us at any time, through any form, and we can’t just camp out by some oracle or some temple or some golden ephod and wait for an utterance. Oh no—He’ll come in His own way and leave just the same. He might speak through a bush that’s on fire, or reprimand us through the mouth of a mule, or wrestle with us through the night on a lonely hillside, or call us from the Terebinth Tree as we’re burning the midnight oil, or join us on a seven-mile hike; and, often, we don’t even know it’s Him until the very last moment.
Ah, but even when He vanishes in the flame, He leaves the fire burning in our hearts ever after.