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There’s bad fire and good fire.
Here a few examples of bad fire. Mick Jagger - don't play with me, 'cause you're playing with fire. I’m pretty sure no one died listening to Mick Jagger sing the song. Then there was the great fire of 1871 in Chicago. Three hundred people died after Mrs. O’Leary’s cow or some gambling men in the O’Leary barn, knocked over a lantern. Believe it or not, the fire of 1901 in Jacksonville, Florida was the third largest, to Chicago and San Francisco. That fire killed seven people and “in eight hours, the fire burned 146 city blocks, destroyed more than 2,368 buildings, and left almost 10,000 residents homeless. It is said the glow from the flames could be seen in Savannah, Georgia, and the smoke plumes in Raleigh, North Carolina.” So, I guess we would all agree that fire can be devastating. It kills, displaces, maims, orphans and otherwise destroys, everything in its path.
Fire, when contained, can be good. Fire controlled in a pit or grill, can cook delicious meats. Fire is a natural part of both forest and grassland ecology and a controlled fire can be a tool for foresters. Controlled burns can help germinate certain desirable trees, while revealing soil mineral layers that help new seedling growth. Possibly the most interesting example of good fire is that of the refining fire. Heating up precious metal to remove the debris/dross.
When heating up gold, the metal is brought to liquefaction. It’s at that point that the debris, dross or imperfections, come to the surface. As the liquid once again hardens, the refiner scrapes off the dross. I can imagine, if this substance had feeling and emotion, that this process would be painful. Heated up to temperatures beyond its knowledge only to be cooled down and scraped. It is allowed to cool down before the refiner heats it up once again to allow the imperfections to surface to the top. The process repeats over again until the imperfections are scraped off and the metal now becomes soft and pliable. At that point, the jeweler takes the soft, precious metal and molds it into something beautiful.
My life, your lives, are like this precious metal. The refiner is who you think it is or who you wonder it might be. Something beyond us, someone unknowingly becomes the refiner in our life. What we think is destroying us, only makes us more beautiful. The refiner is God, the refiner is a true friend, the refiner may be yourself. Most of us resist the fire and god forbid the scraping, as the pain is unimaginable at times. Most of the time we find ourselves in the cooling phase. Everything is good except we aren’t pliable and we have imperfections. We must endure the fire to allow us to mold into something beautiful.
I am the gold.
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