In our campground, there is a friendship campfire each weekend during the winter months. The wood is stacked high and burns long. Often after the other campers have gone back to their coaches, I enjoy sitting and watching the flames as they lick up the wood, dance among the logs, and create an everchanging pattern of art. It is a time of contemplation as I think how the flames would burn and inflict pain if I were to touch them, and yet how those same flames bring warmth, fuel, and purification. So often as I’ve faced difficult and trying situations, I have sung along with a Steve Green CD, the words of “The Refiner’s Fire.” It is a difficult song to sing because it states that I choose, and long for this refinement. However difficult the circumstances in my life, I have discovered the joy of placing my life by faith in the hands of Christ. It is in those times that I can truly say with writers; Jon Mohr and Randall Dennis; “purged and cleansed, and purified, that the Lord be glorified….no matter what I may loose, I choose, the Refiner’s Fire.”
