The crucible for silver and the furnace for god, but the Lord tests the heart.
Proverbs 17:3 NIV
I have never tried to make pottery. I have seen demonstrations of people making pottery and I love looking at pottery at craft shows, but it is not something that I have ever tried. What I have tried though, is making glass beads which is similar in concept.
Since I was 7 I have loved beading. When I was 14, my father brought home a stack of old beading magazines (yes, they make magazines devoted to beading) and I saw an advertisement for a set-up to make your own glass beads from home. Wow! I delved into the research of glass bead-making and asked for an introductory class for Christmas. I took the glass bead-making class and instantly fell in love! I saved my money, I bought my own small, glass-working torch, and all of the other things I would need to turn glass rods into usable beads.
I fell in love with how the glass rod would start to melt and become pliable in the flame. There is indeed an art to wrapping the molten glass around the metal rod (the mandrel) and spinning the mandrel until a nice, even sphere is formed. But, of course, it’s not quite that simple. If you stick the glass rod into the flame too quickly instead of slowly inserting it to melt the glass, it will shatter, sending glass flecks everywhere. Conversely, even if you are successful in introducing the glass rod to the flame, it is another thing to wrap the glass neatly around the mandrel, and then to spin the mandrel quickly enough that a sphere takes shape, but not too quickly that the glass becomes misshapen. If you are successful in doing all of that, there is the final step of working the bead at the back of the flame so that the bead has enough time to cool so that when set in the kiln it won’t lose its shape. However, if you wait too long then the bead will cool too quickly, causing thermal shock to set in and shattering the bead before you have time to put it in the kiln. All of that is just if you are doing a simple bead with one layer of glass! If you want to introduce any intricacies to the bead, then you have to do multiple rounds of heating and cooling the glass rods while keeping the bead slowly rotating within the flame. It can take a while to produce a beautiful detailed bead.
Sometimes one of the glass rods being introduced to the flame will have collected a bit of dirt or dust. Usually when this happens the flame instantly burns away the impurity leaving clean, workable glass for the glass bead. Other times, if the piece of dirt is too big, or doesn’t fleck off in the flame, it can leave a permanent smudge in the glass. Once the glass bead is in the flame a little longer, the speck usually disappears from view, but not always, and even if you cannot see it, the burn mark from the impurity will still remain.
This reminded me of our relationship with God. He has so much patience waiting for us to become who we were meant to be. Like the glass introduced too quickly to the flame, some people immediately want nothing to do with Him. Others are more pliable. We all have sins and stains, like the glass rods can have dirt and debris. Sometimes these are little things which when corrected leave no trace of having ever been there. Others leave deep indents on our souls that we will always carry with us.
It is sometimes startling to see a speck of dust catch bright orange in the flame and then float off, burning itself out before it even touches the table top. Sometimes I feel the same way when I am being put through the refining fire. It is hard to have pieces of me flecked away. Many times I don’t even realize that there is a problem until God turns the spotlight up and I see it as bright as the speck of dust that is on fire in the flame.
What about you? Has God ever uncovered an aspect of you that you would rather keep hidden? Has He put you through the refining fire? It isn’t always a comfortable experience to be shaken and molded by God, but just like the beautiful blemish-free glass bead—the end result is always worth it!
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