Coming Through As Gold
They say that what ever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That when you go through hardship, suffering, trial and fire, you can come out bitter or better, that the fire, it purifies. That gold, when it is put into the furnace, put under fire, it gives up its impurities, these other things inside of it, they rise to the surface to be skimmed off, leaving behind only the gold. In the Christian life, the heat of battle can purify us. In the midst of the hardest battles we are tested. We are seen for what we are, all the impurity rising like so much waste coming from hidden places. The battle tests our hearts. The battle reveals what we are made of. And when we see it, it provides the opportunity to be purged of what is hindering, to shed our dead weight and become all that we need to be to fight the good fight of faith. We studied American history this year in our homeschool, and sometime in the thaw of winter into spring we studied the Winter of Valley Forge. We read