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More than 60 homes and 4,000 acres of land in western Australia have been destroyed by bushfires.
You can read the full story here—what’s notable is what caused such widespread devastation:
“The fire … started when sparks from a power tool accidentally ignited grass in a back garden.” (Not sure they needed to include the word “accidentally” in that sentence!)
It’s that kind of experience James must have been thinking of when he used it as an illustration for something equally dangerous:
“Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue is also a fire … it corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3 v 5-6).
Carl is Editorial Director at The Good Book Company and is a member of Grace Church Worcester Park, London. He is the best-selling author of The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and God's Big Promises Bible Storybook, and also serves as series editor of the God's Word for You series. Before joining TGBC, he worked as a journalist and then as a teacher, and pastored a congregation in Hull. Carl is married to Lizzie, and they have two children. He studied history at Oxford University.
Robert Stanton
But I think that the Apostle also has false teaching in his sights in James 3, which starts "Not many of you should presume to be teachers... because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." So another application for this image ought to be that anyone with the responsibility to teach God's word, from the Pulpit Preacher to the humble Sunday School Teacher, needs to guard their tongues so that they will not unleash a hellish conflagration through teaching error.