Tossing away the dross

And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along.  Acts 27:15

If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.

The little journey to Rome, the place that God made perfectly clear to Paul that he was to go, pretty much feels like my day-to-day.  Or as Sophie pointed out last night, as our community group shared trials that have been resolved and trials that we are in the midst of, what is common to mankind. ...winds were against us... we sailed slowly for a number of days... arrived with difficulty... the wind did not allow us to go farther... voyage was now dangerous...  the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in... soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land...Although Alan reminded us that it could be a lot worse; after reading about the nice, cheerful young man who lost his arms and legs in Afghanistan, his day-to-day murmuring shifted into low gear.

And Elizabeth underscored the if necessary, as in, In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.  Our Loving Father knows that the testing by fire purifies and refines our faith, which is more precious than gold. This testing is not random dumb miserable luck, but it is intentional, deliberate, in order to produce strong, healthy, vibrant lives that persevere.  That’s the hot thing in education journals this week, “The promise of noncognitive factors... that focus on the idea of developing students’ “grit” or perseverance in challenging work.” (University of Chicago, June 2012)

I certainly have one of Alan’s ever-present metaphors clearly in mind.  Those smashed Land Rover bits and pieces dragged up and over the Dominican countryside to be unceremoniously dumped into the flame, hotter and hotter, carefully measured by the fancy new thermocouple sent from the States, until the dross and random nuts and bolts are scooped out, tossed aside, and the shimmering molten mass is poured into a tamped down mold, to emerge as a glistening vessel, ready for service.

So even though we all mutter the “Please, God, help me find a good parking spot,” prayers, deep down we must know that we don’t want fat sit-on-the-couch-of-life existences, or even glowing hobbit lives consisting of at least six meals a day and an endless loop of exchanging birthday presents.  

And even though sometimes the only thing we can immediately feel about the trials passed through is relief from the constant broken-heart pain, we are rejoined to Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when we encounter these various trials of many kinds.  And it not about Dostoevsky’s Man from the Underground’s “I suffer, therefore I am,” three cheers for the dark cellar sort of stiff-upper-lip striding through life.  

Paul, Mr. Bound-In-Chains Paul says, “Pure joy.”