Gold and Fires....

The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold... Lam. 4:2. This description is the people that have Jesus in their hearts, ones that have acknowledged they have sinned against God and by faith have trusted Christ to save them. We are precious in God's heart and thoughts, we are the apple of his eye, we are comparable to fine gold. The verse before this one says, How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! These thoughts leaped out to my heart this morning. While on this earth, we are being sanctified, after Jesus saves us and that is all said and done, he desires that we be conformed to be more like Christ in our thoughts, words, deeds, and its through the work of his Spirit. We prune to get more fruit. He prunes and does works throughout our lives to allow our vessels to be a light to the lost, to be an encouragement to the weak, and go about living on this earth for His glory. We all know how gold becomes more pure. It is through the fire. In I Peter, it says the trial of our faith is tried. As I was thinking about these verses, there has to be a process for the gold to brought to its most genuine brilliance, and the only way is through fire. If God is saying I am comparable to gold and if it can become dim, not necessarily because of sin but because he is just not through working in and on us, so to conform the gold, we have to enter into the fires. Who would invite them, not me, yet Jesus prayed "not my will but thine." Its a bigger picture than finite can comprehend. We do not want fires, trials, but they help us, they work more of Christ in us, they actually make us stronger. You know its still shocking that Joel died, that he had cancer and is not here. I stare at pictures and I can hardly believe all this. There are moments that you question "is God real, is faith real?" In Ps. 100, I read this morning, Know ye that the Lord he is God. I will fling myself on this, He is real, he has purposefully brought this trial and by His grace we will, I will honor Him, who holds little Joel. You know the fact, Joel is not with us right now! But I would say there are few that know the feeling.....and in plain and simple terms, its difficult.....but I"ll press on!!

Jesus does not suffer so as to
exclude your suffering.
He bears a cross, not that you may
escape it, but that you may endure
it. Christ exempts you from sin, but not from
sorrow. remember that and
expect to suffer
-Charles Spurgeon Morning and Evening

Now on a lighter note, wow!! alot of wind aorund here and that means fire danger and that means Elijah gets paged because he's a volunteer fireman now. Yesterday he got two pages, but since he was at work and its whoever arrives first goes on the truck, so he did not get there in time and the second page was a medical need. But this morning at 1 am he got paged and made it to the station and went out to a grass fire and was out until around 4 am. Thankfully all went ok with that!

Lots of projects happening, big and small! Remember I pulled wallpaper off several weeks ago, I finally got these frames and put black and white pictures (it holds 42 photos) in them and will be hanging it in the front hallway. Wednesday, Elijah rented a tractor, bought a 24 foot ten horn or culvert, and a dump truck load of gravel (all with his money) and worked on the little road that goes up to the barn. We are also getting ready for the BIG DAY tomorrow, the Beginners Garden Workshop!! You can still participate. Info and all here. We got 10 dozen doughnuts comin', steaming coffee, fellowship and drawings for some goodies, things that you can purchase and just plain fun!!! Lori, where are you?????? Hope you'll make plans to come!! We are getting things cleaned up today, its been nice to get the outside worked, raked, picked up and cleaned up!

Thanks for your prayers and thoughts and tender words of compassion.....