The Pastor's Heart — To Fan the Flame of Devotion

✦ The Fan of Devotion

Le read the preface of her pastor's book today — and what she found there was the heart she has always known. The heart that walked beside her through health problems. The heart that fanned the flame of devotion when the body was failing and the valley was dark and the husband was carrying a weight that no one should carry alone.

James Smith died in 1862. He never knew Le's name. He never knew about a hospital at midnight in Lubbock, Texas, or a Catholic priest named Father Joe James, or a motorhome crossing Europe, or a poodle named Jolie who attends church in Canterbury. But he knew her soul. He wrote for her — for the suffering, doubting, weary pilgrim who needed someone to keep the flame alive when everything else was going dark.

And today — after forty-eight entries in this journal, after Holy Week, after the river that could not be crossed, after the blaze of the risen sun — Le reads him with joyfulness and thankfulness. Not from the valley this time. From the other side of it. Looking back at the man who fanned the flame — and saying thank you. 🙏

✦ Flowing From Love

A pastoral effort, flowing from love. That is the source. Not scholarship. Not ambition. Not a desire to be published or remembered or quoted in a journal two centuries later. Love for the Lord's people. Everything Smith wrote, every morning devotion, every evening reflection — it flowed from one spring: love. And the love had one aim: to honor God's great name by drawing His people nearer to Him.

And Smith saw clearly — many of the Lord's people are living far below their privileges. Not below their potential. Below their privileges. The inheritance is kept in heaven. The bags of mercy are waiting to be untied. The river is flowing. But the people are not swimming. They are wading ankle-deep — or standing on the bank — when the water was designed to be swum in. And Smith says: we must stir up their pure minds by way of remembrance. Not by novelty. Not by innovation. By remembrance. The daily remembrancer remembers for you when you forget what you have been given. 🙏

✦ The Closet, the Cottage, the Kitchen, the Field

Smith did not write for the cathedral. He wrote for the closet — the private room where you pray alone before dawn. For the cottage — the small home where life is lived simply and means are modest. For the kitchen — where the ordinary is ordained by God, where Chambers said comer, beber, andar, falar are all part of the divine order. For the field — where the labor happens and the body tires and the soul needs fanning most.

Smith went to where the people were. He did not wait for them to come to the pulpit. He came to them. To the different classes of the Lord's family — every one of them. The rich and the poor. The strong and the suffering. The one living in joy and the one walking through the valley. He aimed to speak to all — because all are the Lord's family, and all need to be drawn nearer to their God.

And his methods — four verbs that describe every entry in this journal: convince, comfort, correct, and fan. Convince the doubting mind that the promises are true. Comfort the broken heart that the Shepherd has not forgotten. Correct the wandering soul that the path is narrower than the world suggests. And fan — fan the flame of devotion — keep it burning, keep it alive, keep it warm — even when the valley is cold and the body is failing and the night seems endless. 🙏

✦ The Sameness Is the Medicine

The formula-makers chase novelty. The spiritual consumer wants something new every morning — a fresh insight, a dramatic revelation, a mountaintop experience. And Smith says: no. Some degree of sameness appeared absolutely necessary.

This is the wisdom of the pastor who understands that the weary soul does not need novelty. She needs repetition. The same truths, morning after morning, because the valley keeps coming and the flame keeps needing fanning. Jon Bloom called them ordinary daily devotions — and said God is making something extraordinary through them. Smith knew: the sameness is the point. The repetition is the medicine. The daily remembrancer remembers for you when you are too tired to remember for yourself.

And the truths that bear repeating — Smith names them: habitual dependence upon God. Acknowledging His hand. Walking humbly despite what happens. Three phrases. The vitals of genuine Christianity. Not theology. Not doctrine. Vitals. The organs that keep the body alive. Remove them and the body dies. And they are maintained — like all vital organs — not by one dramatic intervention but by daily, faithful, ordinary operation. Brick upon brick. Morning upon morning. Sameness upon sameness. Until the building rises. 🙏

✦ The Old Is Better

I want nothing new in divinity — the old is better. One sentence that describes the entire spirit of this journal. Le does not read the latest Christian bestseller. She reads James Smith from 1845. Spurgeon from 1869. Bunyan from the 1600s. Augustine from the year 397. George Bowen from the 1860s. Luther from the Reformation. The old is better. Not because the old is fashionable, but because the old has been tested by centuries of suffering, doubting, trusting souls — and has not failed.

We only want the power and unction of the Holy Spirit. Not a new method. Not a better formula. Not an activation code or a three-step process. The Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who hovered over the dark waters in Genesis 1. The same Spirit who burns as a lamp in the night. The same Spirit who cries Abba, Father in the heart of the adopted child. That is all Smith wanted. That is all Le wants. That is all anyone needs.

More of Christ, and less of self. Six words that contain the entire Christian life. Lewis said it on Holy Saturday: the living Christ is killing the old natural self and replacing it with the kind of self He has. Smith says the same thing in the language of the heart: more of Him. Less of me. That is the direction of the dye. That is the trajectory of the hatching. That is the river rising — not toward self, but toward Christ. 🙏

✦ Many a Weary Pilgrim

Comforting many a weary pilgrim. Smith wrote those words in London in the 1840s. He was thinking of the people in his congregation — the sick, the poor, the grieving, the doubting. He could not have imagined that his words would cross two centuries and an ocean and find a Portuguese American woman in Caldas da Rainha who would call him her pastor and read him every morning before dawn.

But that is what happened. The weary pilgrim found the comfort. The major health problems met the pastor's morning visit. The husband suffering under the weight of caring met the pastor's evening visit. And the flame that might have gone out — was fanned. Daily. Faithfully. By a dead man's living words.

Smith asked his readers to give him an interest in their prayers. He said he desired two things: to be more holy, and to be more useful. Le has answered both. She holds him holy — she calls him her pastor. And his usefulness has extended beyond anything he could have imagined — from New Park Street, Southwark, to a journal written in gold and darkness two hundred years later. He wanted to be useful. He has been. More than he will ever know this side of heaven. 🙏

✦ However We May Differ — We Are All One

However we may differ in some things, we are all one in Him. James Smith — Strict Baptist minister of Cheltenham — wrote those words in 1845. Le — converted by a Catholic priest, nurtured by Protestants, praying with Pope Leo XIV — lives those words in 2026. The same truth. The same heart. The same unity.

Catholic and Protestant. Baptist and Catholic priest. James Smith and Father Joe James. Pope Leo and Spurgeon. All rivers to the same ocean. "We are all the same." Le has said it from the beginning of this journal. And here, in the preface of her pastor's book, she finds that he said it too — one hundred and eighty years earlier, from a study in Southwark, London. The unity of the body was not Le's invention. It was her inheritance. Smith held it before she was born. And she holds it now — for the same reason he did: because Christ is one, and His people are one in Him.

Grace, mercy, and peace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. That is Smith's benediction. That is the prayer that closes the preface. And on this morning — reading it with joyfulness and thankfulness, from the other side of the valley, with the flame burning bright — Le receives it. Grace. Mercy. Peace. From a pastor who loved her before she existed. Through a book that fanned the flame when the valley was darkest. For the glory of the One whose name Smith honored with every page. 🙏