Pure Gold

My heart ached this past week as I read a colleague's latest Care Page. In his update he shared a worry that his six year old son's cancer may have returned. His son has battled and conquered a years long cycle of cancer and remission, cancer and remission. Looming before them is the prospect of yet another round of chemotherapy. Too much pain for a precious child. So much heart wrenching grief for parents and siblings.

We look to the right and see sickness. We look to the left and see pain. We look straight ahead and see broken relationships. Hardship seems to lurk around every corner. Yet somehow, God is always at work, strengthening those who endure these trials in amazing, miraculous ways. We watch close friends persevere through serious illness. We witness the rock solid strength God provides following a husband's death.

My devotions this past week brought me to these verses in I Peter, chapter One, here from the Message:

"What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we've been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven - and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you'll have it all - life healed and whole.

I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put into the fire comes out of it proved pure, genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it's your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory."

My simple mind would never compare suffering to gold. But there it is. Written down in black and white. In God's Word. The simple truth of this Scripture paints a beautiful picture of suffering. Out of curiosity, I needed to know more, so naturally I researched gold's refining process. Here's what I learned.

Refining gold by flame is one of the earliest known methods, used back in Bible times. A craftsman would sit near an intense fire and tend to the molten gold, stirring and skimming off the impurities that rose to the top. Think of God as the craftsman, the fire as sufferings and trials, and the gold as our spiritual selves. Here's where the beautiful picture part comes in. If we realize that God is right there, sitting alongside the intense fire, carefully skimming the impurities from our molten gold, we might begin to understand the importance of trials in our lives. Follow along a little further.

We have to be careful not to fall for Pyrite, or Fool's Gold. Fool's Gold looks so much like real gold that it's easy to be duped. But there is a simple test to tell the difference between the two. Take a hammer to Pyrite and it shatters. Take a hammer to pure gold and it flattens or expands. So there you have it! Simply stated; if we trust only in ourselves and not in God, life shatters under the pressure of its trials and sufferings. But a life lived in proved faith only flattens or expands under the pounding pressure of sickness, devastation and loss.

You may be experiencing the hammering of life's circumstances right now. You may feel you've been handed the short stick. But know this: you will not shatter. You will not break. YOU are the real deal.

Intense heat will be painful. Refining will be necessary. Proved gold is priceless.