A newly engaged couple begins planning their wedding. First stop: a jeweler to pick out wedding rings. They choose a matching pair of gleaming gold bands entwined with a finely-engraved design. Next, they select a beautiful set of delicate china with intricately detailed patterns around the rim. Every time they look at the rings and use the china they will think about their beauty and significance.
It’s unlikely, though, that this couple will ever consider how these lovely objects came to be, or the fact that these valuable items came from humble, worthless beginnings: rocks and dirt.
The journey from rocks to rings, from dirt to dinnerware, is complex and difficult, particularly when you look at it from the perspective of the raw materials.
God made it difficult to obtain gold, which is one of the reasons it is so valuable to us. Gold begins its life as an ore, such as the one shown to the right. In one of the processes of refining gold, the rock is first pulverized into a powder which is roasted to 1,000 degrees. It is then treated with a cyanide solution, which bonds with the metals in the ore and pulls them out, leaving the other minerals behind. The solution is then treated with a series of chemical processes to retrieve the metals from the liquid.
The result is pressed into bars containing gold, silver, copper, platinum, and other metals. To refine it further, the bars are placed in an acid solution and electricity is passed through to separate the various metals from each other. Repeated treatments and other chemical processes produce pure gold.
The jeweler then takes the gold, pounds it, forms it, carves it, and manipulates it to produce a beautiful ring.
The china gets similar treatment. It begins as clay soil, mixed with water to form a paste. This paste is washed and filtered to remove impurities. It must also be thoroughly mixed and worked to remove any air bubbles. The paste is formed by pressing or casting into the desired shape. The raw item is fired at a relatively low temperature to dry it and remove some impurities. Glazes and colorings seal the china and decorate it, and it is fired again at about 2,200 degrees to melt the clay particles into glass and vitrify the piece into the final product. Once it cools, the china is hard and brittle.
It occurs to me that we often look at mature Christians the same way we look at a piece of fine china or beautiful jewelry: with awe and wonder and amazement at how perfect they are. We think of ourselves as being impossibly far from that kind of existence. We could never have that kind of relationship with Christ, that kind of perfectly blessed life. We have so many impurities.
But I think it’s important to realize that every one of those “perfect” people went through the same kind of refining and molding process that the clay and the gold went through. All we’re seeing is the final product; looking at that product, you can’t see the raw materials or the journey that led to a piece of china or jewelry. Likewise, we can’t see the brokenness, the mistakes, the wrong choices, the trials, the valleys, the fire and pounding that it took to take a worthless life and turn it into a beautiful one.
A potter can look at a pile of mud, a jeweler can look at an ugly grey rock, and they can see the potential. God can look at what we have, and although we often can’t see any potential, any way of making something out of nothing, He can see the flecks of bright gold and the tiny grains of clay that He can extract and mold and turn into beautiful perfection.
The next time you look at someone and wish you could be like them, wish you could have their life without burdens and pain, know that it was precisely the burdens and pain that got them there, and that the fire you’re going through right now is God’s way of purifying you so that someday, a younger person can look at your life and desire the blessings and closeness with God that you have.
So when you put on your gold jewelry or get out the good china for a special dinner, remind yourself that the beauty came from materials that had little inherent worth, and it was the process that imbued it with value.
Photo Credits: Ore Sample by Charles Butler, http://www.butlerlab.com
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