Taking The Bad With The Good, And Growing A Little

Weston presented us with his third tooth today, an upper incisor at that. We were very excited for him. But unfortunately, this little blessing comes with great struggle. He's fairly miserable. His nose is running like a faucet; he's running a low-grade fever; he isn't sleeping well; and he doesn't really want to eat. All that, and the pain he must feel, have him feeling really grouchy. And I just feel awful for him, because there really isn't much I can do for him.

This whole process is a lot like life, when you think about it. We run into struggles--some huge and some small, but all difficult to bear, for even the less difficult struggles seem overwhelming when we are in the midst of them. It seems like the struggle will never end. It weighs on us when we are eating, when we are sleeping, and when we are going through our daily routine. Sometimes the struggles bring us to tears and sometimes we just don't know what to do with ourselves. But in the end, when the pain is gone, we find that we have grown, that we have become more complete somehow just for having endured. And we also find the next struggle a bit easier to bear because we know it won't actually kill us, even if it seems like it will.

Many of our struggles we bring on ourselves. But sometimes, it is the Lord who allows the struggle to come upon us. And it is these struggles that we are able to grow from. It is these situations that allow us to become more complete in the Lord. I got an e-mail forward the other day, which I normally don't even read, much less pass along. But this one made an excellent point, and I have been thinking about it all week. I will share it here, because perhaps one of you is in the midst of a struggle brought on by the Lord to make you stronger and more complete, and you need a little encouragement, just as I did.

**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."**