Processing

"Steel is the product of iron plus fire. Soil is rock plus heat and the crushing of glaciers....In the same way, the development of human character requires a plus attached to it, for great character is made not through luxurious living but through suffering."
-L.B. Cowman, Streams in the Desert, Dec. 2 Devotion

I've been studying for my Materials exam on Wednesday for the past five days or so. We have a test on the mechanics of the materials as well as the heat, mass and momentum transport of the materials.

So....

I've learned a lot about how materials work.

And one lecture came to mind when I read this quote above earlier this morning. 

My professor did an awesome demo a few classes ago. He took a hair pin and bent it back and forth and it didn't break. He then took another one, lit it on fire and quickly put it in a glass of cold water. When he bent the hair pin, it broke very easily. Finally, he took a third hair pin and lit it on fire, but this time, he didn't put it in the water. He allowed it to cool down for about a minute. When he went to bend it, it was strong and did not break.

Now I know and undersstand the mechanics of how this all works. It includes quenching, annealing and cold working. But I'm not going there...

Instead, I just want to talk about how sometimes the challenges in our lives are exactly what we need to grow and become who God wants us to be. Sometimes in life, we will be asked to walk through the fire. Or sometimes we will be dumped into a situation that we don't want to be in. Circumstances arise that sometimes we don't know how we will get through them. And sometimes we are asked to wait, and with time, we may  find healing and strength.

But all of that is how God "processes" us. It is how we gain a meaningful relationship with Him. It is how we learn more about Him. It is how we become close to Him and experience His presence.