Pascal's Night of Fire

On the evening of November 23, 1654, Blaise Pascal — the brilliant French mathematician who had already invented the calculator and proved the existence of atmospheric pressure — sat alone in his room in Paris. What happened next shattered everything he thought he knew.

For two hours, beginning around half past ten, Pascal encountered the living God. Not the God of philosophers and scholars, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The experience was so overwhelming that he could barely find words. He grabbed a scrap of parchment and scrawled in trembling lines: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace."

Then, like Isaiah undone before the throne, Pascal wrote words of raw surrender: "I have been separated from Him. I have fled from Him, denied Him, crucified Him." The conviction was total. And yet, in that same blazing encounter, came cleansing — "Let me never be separated from Him."

Pascal sewed that scrap of parchment into the lining of his coat and carried it against his chest for the rest of his life. He abandoned his pursuit of worldly fame and devoted his remaining years to defending the faith.

When the Holy One draws near, we are first undone — and then, like Isaiah, remade. The same fire that exposes our unworthiness becomes the coal that purifies our lips and frees us to answer, "Here am I, send me."