Tool or Jewel?

Sometimes life stinks. You try your best to do what is right, you mostly stay out of trouble, you haven't broken any laws, but, once in a while, life clobbers you hard. Maybe your family came down on you when you didn't deserve it. Your best friend's been cutting you down real bad for no reason. The girl or guy you've been interested in couldn't care less about how you feel. You get the feeling that life is out to pound you into the ground. You're burning up inside, and every day it gets worse! Why? Why is this happening to you? It isn't fair! It can't be right!

The process whereby gold and silver are refined involves repeated melting at high temperatures, burning away the impurities, so that these precious metals are ready for the manufacture of jewelry.

But, what if you don't need jewels. Let's say what you really need is a tool. It doesn't really matter if what you need is a hammer or a chisel, a sewing machine, a saw blade, a roller to make sheet metal for car-bodies or a press to shape cell-phone batteries... what you NEED is a TOOL! You can't make most tools out of gold or silver, these metals are just too soft.

Some tools can be made out of iron (which is harder), but really good tools have to be made out of steel. Steel is made from iron, and the refining process for iron is similar to that of gold or silver.

But to make steel, tool-grade steel, the temperature is a lot hotter. After the iron has been refined, you actually have to add impurities to the liquid metal, let it cool slightly, press it into long bars, fold it over onto itself, and then pound it together. After a slight cooling, you take it back, almost to the liquid state and repeat this process, sometimes thousands of times. Over and over, tremendous heat, fantastic pressure, exposure to contaminants, and constant pounding. Finally, the metal has big chunks cut away, and THEN its stamped under thousands of tons of pressure. All this, just to make a steel tool.

Nobody makes jewelry out of iron or steel, and people just don't need tools made of gold or silver, & God doesn't much use jewels to spread His word. He needs tools... us. He needs us to be tough enough to stand up to life's abuse, to accept His guidance, to do His work. In other words, to be His tools!

So remember, when you get dealt a nasty hand, when it all seems like it is too much for one person to bear, when you are burning up inside at the injustice of it all, remember... God needs TOOLS to spread His word.

So... ARE YOU a TOOL? or just a jewel?