In my earlier hunting and shooting days I would cast from lead the bullets I required to suit a variety of shooting applications – especially competition shooting. I won’t bore you (geddit?) with the science of internal, external and terminal ballistics; muzzle velocities, the ballistic coefficients of projectiles and so on – trust me, it is a complex science. But I immensely enjoyed the hobby/sport whiling away the hours at the shooting range, or in the bush, experimenting with the lead projectiles I had manufactured and trialling them with different propellant powders.
I had an electric lead melting pot with which I melted down lead scrounged from just about anywhere – car wheel weights by the side of the road, the remainder of previously fired ammo from behind the targets on the shooting range, and, well, just about anywhere you could scrounge scrap lead. I also knew a printer mate in the days when linotype was still used in printing presses. Linotype was lead with a high tin content which made it harder than normal lead and less prone to distortion. The linotype lettering stamps were all individually hand set in the printer – one letter at a time to make one whole page of print. It was a tedious job requiring great care and there was no spellchecker as we know it today; just proof-readers who looked for errors in the first print run.
Anyway, I digress. I would collect the discarded linotype stamp blocks and add those to my lead melting pot with the other scrap lead I’d collected according to a secret recipe I had developed. The lead and linotype were melted down in the melting pot which had a capacity of a large coffee mug. It had a small pouring spout near the bottom on the side which was sealed by a plunger-lever arrangement on top of the pot. When I needed to pour hot lead into the bullet moulds, I’d just lift the plunger and the molten lead would run out filling the cavities. You had to be quick, as the lead would quickly solidify …
During the process of melting down the lead, a few steps were necessary before pouring. The lead and linotype were heated to a very high temperature and when fully melted looked quite dirty – all sorts of debris and impurities were forced to the surface by the heat. And there was a lot of it, too. It was astonishing to see that amount, and the size of some of those particles of impurity which, if left in the final pour, would render the bullets all weighing differently and this would have significant ramifications for accuracy in the rifle. It is an exacting business, but necessary!
I would sit at the melting pot carefully stirring the molten alloy. With an old teaspoon I would scoop off the surface all the rubbish that floated to the top, before casting. One final step was to toss in some beeswax which caused a fluxing that released the smallest of impurities until the alloy was pure and ready to cast.
By the end of the process, after many stirring and scooping steps, the lead looked like pure silver in the melting pot – exactly like mercury. The surface looked like a small round mirror, in which I could see the shadow outline of my head.
Malachi 3:2-3 (NIV)
“But who can endure the day of His [the Lord’s] coming? Who can stand when He appears? For He will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the Levites [priests of God] and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, …”
The process of refining requires much heat – a lot of heat. The intense heat forces stuff to the surface that our Refiner will scoop off over and over again, until He can see His face reflected in each of us. The refining process can be painful, there are often tears. It necessarily takes time and patience. It can feel as though it will never end. But it will. The Refiner wants to come to the place with each of us where He is now able to see Himself in us, and is ready to pour pure alloy into new moulds.
The shooter’s process of casting lead bullets is tedious and exacting; but once at the shooting range in the heat of high-level competition, or when out in the bush, the end results were highly accurate, extremely effective - and very satisfying, indeed.
Likewise, though the process of the Lord refining us is intense and can feel tedious, painful and exacting … the end result is very effective Christian living, powerful ministry – and an incredibly, deeply satisfying contentment in the Lord.
I have learned that it is in the sounds of silence of the crucible of one’s personal, private refining suffering that the noblest dreams are born, unsullied by soulishness. It is there that God's greatest gifts and revelations are given, and where one’s call to minister is greatly expanded and generously anointed in a gracious consolation for what we have been through.
In that place … there are no regrets. None!
Philippians 4:12b-13
“I have been initiated and refined [by God] into the mystery of pure contentment whatever the situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in poverty.
13 I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”
Be encouraged!
Ps Milton