“GLASS BLOWING”
Recently, I had the opportunity to blow my own glass. I had wanted to do this for many years. It was such a unique creative thing to do. Totally spoke my language.
As I sat on a bleacher watching I saw three hot furnaces in front of me burning bright with fire. They looked like the ovens that pizza are cooked in in a restaurant, arches included. To the right was a table filled with different kinds of very sharp small shards of glass. The shards were brilliant in color.
Pretty soon it was my turn. I went to the 2400 degree fire oven and put my long pole in the fire and rolled it around. (Remember your kitchen oven reaches 500 degrees.) I pulled my pole out with a fireball on the end of it-brilliant orange, very hot, and smooth like glass.
I carefully carried the pole to the table and rolled the fireball in cobalt blue shards, purple shards, a touch of yellow and swirl of white and green so as to make turquoise when it melted-like the sea. All the shards stuck to the fireball like a magnet and poked out sharp, like porcupine quills.
I rolled and rolled the pole round and round in my hands like the pole was on a spit, watching the sharp shards melt in the fire ball.
I put the pole back into the fire pit at 2400 degrees again turning the pole the entire time, the colors became smooth with the fireball till you couldn’t tell where one began and one ended. (This procedure of applying shards and melding in the fire pit was repeated several times.)
As I watched this process I thought of Heavenly Father and how He refines us as we walk through the Refiner’s Fire throughout our life. Our choices and experiences can get-oh, so very hot, yet with hearts turned towards our Lord He slowly melts our sharp shards, battling our will versus Father’s will, until our souls and Father’s will become one. A soul that melts into a refined obedient soul, one who wants to follow our Lord and be an emissary of God wanting to choose the right and be good forever; so individual, yet happening individually with each of us-Heavenly Father’s children throughout time.
In the end, after much heat, and fire, a beautiful refined piece of glass was created. A treasure never to be forgotten, just like in the end of our journey a beautiful refined child of God moves to his next estate, refined with rough edges smoothed out, at one with God.
The experience was life changing-a poingnant change of heart.
