A Fire Story

Fire has never been my close friend. Although jamming, ghost stories and marshmallow over campfires are the best, I really try to never get so close with fire, or play with fire (except when I was like 5 or 6 that I furiously ran my index finger over a candle flame). You may not know about it, but I have a very  awful experience with fire when I was young. Back when I was 13 years old, our house got burned, being left with nothing but black ashes of memories. We were not there when it happened, so It means that we were only able to save what's in our bag and what we're wearing that very day. For one week I had to go to school with a shirt and the same pants, and had to kept on explaining repeatedly to Manong Guards, subject teachers, Ate/Kuya sa canteen, Ate sa photocopy center, and gossipmonger batch mates about what happened and why I was not wearing the school uniform. Since then, fire has never been my close friend, and will never be.

But it kept on chasing me.

This time of my life I feel like I am being quenched in a blazing furnace. The scorching created blisters in my inner soul that ablaze my carefree life. It seriously hurts. It's uncomfortable. It's painful. But it is necessary.

Remove the dross from the silver, and a silversmith can produce a vessel

- Proverb 25:4

Just as this verse says, a silversmith has to heat up his metal, so that the dross will rise to the top, and he can scrape it off. Me comparing to a silver, needs to be heated up. I hate to say it but, I need to be put on fire. What for? Two things: a) so that the dross will be separated from the silver; and b) so it can be easily molded.

In metallurgy, heat stirs up the material that engages separation of valuable metal from unwanted mineral. Similarly in our spiritual life, furnace-like situation induces dettachment from unwanted baggages that keeps us from getting God's provision and blessings. Sometimes, God put a little heat and pressure in our life so that all our dross (attitudes, habits, etc.) will come to surface, ready to be scraped off. Scraping is not even as comfortable as as it sounds. Scraping, like being heated, is tormenting. But it is necessary. It is for our own good.

When a metal has been subjected to high temperature and pressure its properties are altered that it can be easily molded to its desired form. God does the same thing with us. After scraping off unwanted baggages, we are ready to be molded by our Silversmith. Now we are ready to face the world with confidence in our hearts, pure, beautiful, reflecting the light of His awesome workmanship.

Fire has never been my close friend. But I have to put my guards down, raise my spritual white banner, and allow this time of my life to teach me good but hard lessons. Soon enough, this will entail a favorable result making me a more beautiful individual designed in God's image, for God's purpose.

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Zechariah 13:9 (The Message)

".. I'll deliver the surviving third to the refinery fires. I'll refine them as silver is refined, test them for purity as gold is tested. Then they'll pray to me by name and I'll answer them personally.

I'll say, 'That's my people.'

They'll say, 'God —my God!' "