Refined

Refined according to Dictionary.com

1. having or showing well-bred taste


2. free from coarseness or vulgarity


3. freed from impurities


4. very subtle, precise or exact

Hmmm, interesting. Have you ever seen something be refined? When I was young, my dad would take me with him to the shooting range and we would pick up all manner of "slugs" from around the targets (common practice to go to the shooting range when your daddy is a policeman). We would take them home and he would make his own bullets for target practice with them. How cool...my dad was "green" before the term was ever coined. My job was to search carefully under and around the targets in the dirt for little bits of banged up metal.

Dad had a special melting pot that went to extreme high temperatures to melt the discarded metal bits. He would slowly add bits of metal until the pot had enough in it then he used a special scoop to take the "slag" off the top. This is a time consuming process and take precision since you don't want to take away all the purified metal but just the spoils. He would watch and wait until the molten liquid took on the right "color" then he would pour some into small molds for the bullets and the rest he would pour into bars reserved for later use. I would wait and wait and wait for them to be cooled so I could play with them and to be able to help make the bullets. Daddy was always good about making sure that I knew how important my role of helper was to him and would often praise me for how quickly I would find the metal bits at the range and how well I loaded the shells in the tubes. Strangely enough, it takes adulthood for me to remember how much that meant to me.

As for the left over lead bars...did you know they are bright silver? I loved to play with them. The color was fabulous and I would pretend it was real silver. They were the "treasure" we used for pirate, cowboy, cops & robber games. Refined bits of spent metal that was heated at just the right temperature to clear the impurities and let their true color shine through.

How lucky I have been to see this process play out in real life so that I might remember that I too am just a bit of spent metal all dirty and banged up, picked up with loving hands from the ground to be carefully heated, carefully cleaned of my spoils and carefully made into a treasure. It's an awesome God that cares so much for me. I get myself dirty often enough but still He takes the heat that could damage me and uses it instead to carefully work out His design by removing my selfishness, my pride, my control, my self-pity, my anger, my resentment, my jealousy and any other sins I am guilty of. I am excited to see what my true color and design will be as I strive to stay in the melting pot and let the Master do His work to make me into His treasure.