Sundays are often difficult for me. My beliefs and faith matter a great deal to me, and sometimes I feel like the people with whom I worship and about whom I care the most don't seem interested in faith or the Faith. Sometimes, I go to bed more tired after the Day of Rest than I was when I awoke, but then again, it doesn't mean that kind of rest. In fact, the Day of Rest was originally one day a week God gave man in order to encourage man to spend it getting closer to God, and at least Sundays accomplish that for me.
I do not know if I would think about the Savior as much if not for the congregation I attend. They seem so much more interested in going through the motions than anything else and strike me as the people CS Lewis mentions who "do not desire true nakedness in prayer". When I relate the scriptures to us and point out how we are repeating their mistakes, the parishoners rationalize that, although we might make the same mistakes, "at least we're not making them as often". Excuse me! Being less bad doesn't make you good, and it certainly doesn't make you any better to admit you are bad and justify it because you're not sinning as badly or in the same way. Perhaps this is the process and place God has chosen in which to refine my soul.
Years ago, I worked briefly in a refinery not far from where I live now. This company smelters titanium from rocks into ingots which it then sells to companies that mostly make airplane parts from it. We've all heard of the refiner's fire, and this company uses a very hot fire, but more than that, it also uses acid during the refining process to burn out other impurities that do not come out in fire. Making a titanium ingot is expensive and difficult, and I have seen the rejects- they're very "colorful", much like unrefined people, laced with metals of other elemental makeup that would weaken the titanium.
As I considered the refining process, I realized how much I know about this from other pursuits. In graduate school, we cared for a vineyard on which we depended for our data. Every year, we would prune the plants, dig up and around their roots, hack them back to nothing, and dung them. Honestly, this looks barbaric. We really tortured these grape vines, and yet, reliably they grew back every year, stronger, with better fruit in greater quantity. Some of them died, but the ones that survived the refining process grew stronger and better, and I know that's how it works.
God allows trials to come upon us because they refine our soul. If we respond correctly, penitently, and submit to the will of the Master by turning to Him as our Lord and Savior, we can grow back stronger and more fruitful. He's less concerned with our wardrobe or our vocabulary or our vocation because He cares more about what we are than what we do. He is looking to make us useful, like the titanium ingots or the grapevines, and so the impurities must be removed, the stalks made stronger. To make steel strong, the metal must be beaten and heated repeatedly.
Following Christ becomes then a great paradox. Rather than finding a life of ignoble ease and rainbows and butterflies, the path of discipleship is wrought with perils and pitfalls. The road is rough, not because God doesn't want us to make it up the path, but because the path makes us into what He intends us to become. The difficulty of the path reminds us that we are dependent on God for all that we have and are, and that all of us need a Savior to carry us ultimately to paths that we do not know and of which we are not ourselves capable, no matter our talents or tenacity. The path is not there to perfect us; the commandments remind us of our need for a Savior, and when we turn to Him, He makes weak things strong in us because He is in us. It's tough to follow Christ because the path to become like Christ exists to make us tough.
Ultimately, some of the worst experiences of my life have been the best things that happened to me. Fortunately for me and with gratitude to God, they turned me to Christ. I know that in order to progress, the difficulty level must increase. I may continue to be burned, beaten, acid washed, pruned, dunged, and dug about. All of this is so that I can grow back hardier, faster, and more fruitful. A refined soul is one that has been made pure. Apparently, I need my current circumstance to get me to turn towards and think about Christ. I see I have a long way yet to go.
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