Like heat?

    It is still extremely hot here in Oklahoma. I have to confess that each time I complain about the heat, I feel guilty. My daughter’s boyfriend is serving the Lord as a missionary in Haiti. It is 110 degrees each day, with total destruction around him. If he takes a shower, he says the grey dust is back on you within minutes. He is building houses and moving cinder blocks all day long in that heat. He sleeps outside in a hammock every night because the 100 degree weather is cooler outside than inside his sleeping quarters. There is no air conditioning to escape too. So, when I say it is hot, please take it in the perspective of my non-acclimated, spoiled, opinion! I would think that heat would kill weeds but it tends to only kill the good stuff like the green grass and blooming flowers. It seems the weeds flourish in the heat. Dang it!

     Just this morning at church, a very sweet man was telling me that he loved the heat but it was making him very edgy. He was getting angry and short tempered, which is not like him. It seems to be common that people get cranky when the heat cranks up! We use many phrases that reflect a connection between heat and agitation, i.e. we say our tempers "flare"; we get "hot under the collar" when frustrated, and “do a slow bum" when angered. We even see crimes like family disturbances, rape, and assault increase in summer months.
     Heat seems to bring out the sin in people. Maybe it wears us down and we can’t fake it anymore. I wonder if that is why Satan will spend eternity in a ‘hottest of hot’ place. While Satan uses 'heat' to increase the sin in our life, Jesus uses 'heat' to decrease the dross, or sin in our life. When our sin comes to the 'surface', when we repent of our sin, He can skim it off. He does this process like a silversmith who brings the impurities in the silver to the top of his pot by increasing the fire underneath it. When the impurities arise, he skims them off and he knows the process is over when he can see his reflection in the silver.
     What about you? When the heat of life hits you, what do you do with the impurities that show them self? Do you act on them and let your sin be used by Satan, or do you let Jesus remove them from you so that you become a reflection of your Savior?

For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver.

Psalm 66:10