REFINED

Maybe it’s good that we don’t know what we will have to stand up under one day. Because when we get there we are somehow able to withstand whatever is trying to crush us. Not that we don’t suffer the pain of it. We do. But we find ourselves somehow still living and breathing along with everyone else who is walking through life unscathed. If we had known, would we have sheltered ourselves? Would we have been brave enough to face the hard, and with it all of the good and bad that was found in it? We might have missed discovering our own strength. Strength that not only allows us to hold ourselves together, but to lift the weight that is crushing others. Or the intense love that can come having passed through conflict and strife. We could have left behind the pain of loneliness but never truly looked in the eyes of the One that truly fills us. If we saw it all laid out before us, would we have chosen to become who we are? What this life has made us into? We have been refined into God’s treasures. Would we have it any other way?