Feeding the fireplace

A good friend of mine keeps on telling me that I can never be a good human rights activist. And I think he is partly true. I sometimes fail to understand how I can go on hunger strike to force the government into action. I also don’t believe I can chain myself at some gate shouting loudly and wailing for action. I think I love myself too much.

Without questioning the genuineness of an activist, the concept of self denial works well at time. The principle of choosing to deny one self’s basic rights for the good of a larger family. Yeah, I may not be a human rights activist, but I am an activist in my own right.

As a young man I have gone through the university of life and at some level I have had to do some things to call for action. For example I have had to deal with some kind of addictions. And for some of these habits to cease I’ve had to actively deny myself some basic rights in regards to the said habit to bring out the desired output.

Let me use the analogy of feeding the fireplace to explain. For one to keep the fire burning, one is required to keep feeding the fireplace with fresh firewood. As the firewood burns, more fresh firewood is required. They also say, where there is no wood, the fire goes out.

For us to get off sinful habits, we must stop feeding ourselves fresh firewood that propels them. For example if one is struggling with addiction to pornography, one stopping to watch new porn and stopping replaying the stored images in his head, is in essence not providing fresh firewood and thus the fire goes out. But the moment fresh firewood is provided, the fire keeps burning.

The same applies to things like worshipping God. When we constantly feed ourselves with fresh wood such as the proceeding word of God, the fire keeps burning for God. And when we leave the fireplace unattended, the firewood finishes and the fire goes out. And we wonder what happened.

Yeah, you too can be an activist in your own right. It just depends with what is your fireplace? Call yourself into action.