God as silversmith

  • silvervasedetail.jpg(I have a friend who is a ser­ial e-mailer — every­one has one or two of those friends, right? They send every­body e-mail humor, cons, inspi­ra­tion and sup­posed news bul­letins that are usu­ally bogus (“Send this e-mail to 3000 of your friends!!! Con­gress is pass­ing a bill to tax church­go­ers and casserole-makers up to $30,000 a year!!!!”). Well, since you can’t do a thing to impact the qual­ity or stem the flow of e-mail, it’s best to just take them as they come. But this one I thought was bet­ter than most, and so I pass it along.)

    ***

    Malachi 3:3 says: “He will sit as a refiner and puri­fier of silver.”

    This verse puz­zled some women in a Bible study and they won­dered what this state­ment meant about the char­ac­ter and nature of God.

    One of the women offered to find out the process of refin­ing sil­ver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study.

    That week, the woman called a sil­ver­smith and made an appoint­ment to watch him at work. She didn’t men­tion any­thing about the rea­son for her inter­est beyond her curios­ity about the process of refin­ing silver

    As she watched the sil­ver­smith, he held a piece of sil­ver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refin­ing sil­ver, one needed to hold the sil­ver in the mid­dle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.

    The woman thought about God hold­ing us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: “He sits as a refiner and puri­fier of sil­ver.” She asked the sil­ver­smith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the sil­ver was
    being refined.

    The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there hold­ing the sil­ver, but he had to keep his eyes on the sil­ver the entire time it was in the fire. If the sil­ver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.

    The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the sil­ver­smith, “How do you know when the sil­ver is fully refined?”

    He smiled at her and answered, “Oh, that’s easy — when I see my image in it”!

    If today you are feel­ing the heat of the fire, remem­ber that God has his eye on you and will keep watch­ing you until He sees His image in you.


    Related posts:

    1. C. S. Lewis on the love of God
    2. On Ques­tion­ing God
    3. The Wrath of God in a light green suit
    4. Two wolves
    5. The Ortho­dox con­vert list

    June 18th, 2007 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 06.18.2007

    I’m here to ver­ify the process. I did lost wax jew­elry cast­ing in high school.
    Once you burn off the impu­ri­ties the sur­face of the sil­ver is like a mir­ror. Pretty cool imagery and metaphor. “Our God is a con­sum­ing fire”…but He does not con­sume US.

  • Michelle

    That’s a neat story. I like it when I actu­ally get a for­ward that I like from some­one :)

  • Grace

    s-p,
    Oh good, it’s accu­rate. I liked the imagery in any case, but I’m glad if it’s also factual.

    What I thought they were going for when I read the part about hav­ing to just sit there is that God doesn’t put us in the fire and then stand back from us so He won’t get burnt (sort of more like a black­smith). He has to be very aware what the fire is doing. Which may be why peo­ple say that in the worst of times, God is “very” present, if you have eyes to see it.

    Not that a lot of us wouldn’t set­tle for being slightly less purifed, but thank heaven, it’s not our call.

  • Grace

    Michelle,
    Yep, it’s a sur­prise but a nice one. You never know with ser­ial e-mails — sort of an elec­tronic garage sale.

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