Vanity on Fire
Create in me a pure heart, O God.
Psalm 51:10
In February 1497, a Monk named Girolamo Savonarola started a fire. Leading up to this, he and his followers spent several months collecting items that they thought might entice people to sin or neglect their religious duties—including artwork, cosmetics, instruments, and dresses. On the appointed day, thousands of vanity items were gathered at a public square in Florence, Italy, and set on fire. The event has come to be known as the Bonfire of the Vanities.
Savonarola might have found inspiration for his extreme actions in some shocking statements from the Sermon on the Mount. “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away,” said Jesus. “And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away” (Matthew 5:29-30). But if we interpret Jesus’s words literally, we miss the point of the message. The entire sermon is a lesson on going deeper than the surface, to focus on the state of our hearts rather than blaming our behavior on external distractions and temptations.
The Bonfire of the Vanities made a great show of destroying belongings and works of art, but it is unlikely that the hearts of those involved were changed in the process. Only God can change a heart. That’s why the psalmist prayed, “Create in me a pure heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10). It’s our heart that counts.
By Remi Oyedele
REFLECT & PRAY
Holy God, please give me the grace to surrender my heart to You and yield my life’s vanities to the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit.
What behaviors or distractions might be on your list of “vanities”? How do you try to “manage” them?
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
In ancient thinking, the “heart” was considered a person’s core—the source from which flowed all thoughts, words, and actions. In Matthew 5, Jesus emphasizes that life in God’s kingdom requires radical transformation and continual reshaping of our hearts so that we cultivate a profoundly different way of life—one that’s invitational and beneficial to the world (vv. 14-16). Monica Brands
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