“Distillation”

I still have occasional flashbacks from my Organic Chemistry labs back in the late ‘60’s, with “the goofball students” (not me) igniting the various  volatile chemicals, followed by the crashing of the expensive glassware as they tried to put out the raging infernos…. the lab instructor giving detailed instructions in a foreign language…”ah,ya,ya,ya,ya”.  Yet I do remember a few experiments with some fondness….. you guessed it, the distillation experiments. 

I’m sure many of you are regular watchers of the program “Moonshiners” on the Discovery channel. For years these moonshiners have been making “white lightening” whiskey in their stills hidden away in the mountains…. then racing in their “souped up” hot rods to get away from the revenooers.  Be careful of the white lightening, sometimes as high as 95% alcohol; if made incorrectly it can cause blindness or even death…if made correctly it can still give you an epic hangover. Dave, puleeeeaaase…. where are you going with this BLOG??? Okay, just calm down, be patient, hold your horses…. step at a time. 

“The distillation process, by using selective boiling and condensation, eliminates impurities and isolates the desired product.” So the Lord sometimes uses the distillation process in  order to purify us. The Lord often applies “heat” to our lives in order to separate out the impurities in our life. Okay, so far, so good.

Jesus knows we often don’t do well on our own.  “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners! “(Mt. 11:16-19)

Left to myself, I can get very comfortable with my life …..  into my routine, my comfort zone, my own world. I can become complacent…. smug, with an uncritical satisfaction with myself, lethargic and even lukewarm. Yikes, this is not good.

So the Lord turns up the heat to get my attention. He begins to distill out some of these impurities. Even when I see that my life needs some purification, it’s hard for me to make it happen; it’s hard for me to turn up the heat on myself. So, when infirmities pop into my life, often it’s the Lord who allows them in order to bring a little heat. Let’s not panic or whine when they come, it’s often exactly what I need. God is at work making us holy. And this is very good news.