Tending to the Fire Within (Walter Hilton)
“It may sometimes happen that the more troubled you have been outwardly with active work the more fervent your desire will be for God and the clearer your view of spiritual things, by the grace of our Lord, when you come to devotion. It works out as if you had a little burning coal with which you wanted to make a fire and get it burning. You would first lay sticks on it and cover the coal; and although it might briefly seem that you were putting the coal out with the sticks, nevertheless after a brief wait and a little blowing there soon springs out a great flaring flame, for the sticks have turned into fire. It is just so spiritually; the will and desire that you have for God are like a little coal of fire in your soul, for they give you some amount of spiritual heat and light: but very little, since they often grow cold and turn into bodily rest—sometimes into idleness. So it is good to put on sticks, which are the good works of active life. If it happens that these activities seem