Christian Living

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For about fifty or sixty short years most of us are on the anvil while life hammers away. The furnace is hot, and the hammer is heavy and certain. The blows are punishing but effective. This is where our mettle is tested: how we react to the hammer and the anvil will reveal clearly what we are made of. We are being molded: the imperfections, sins, shortcomings, etc., are being painstakingly hammered out unless we rebel and crawl off the anvil, unwilling or unable to submit to the molding of our Maker. And, as time goes, it is a relatively short period, but at the end of it, our malleability or lack of it, has generally been plainly revealed. The divine Smith has done His work to forge the iron of our character into something useful. We have at least begun to be shaped into the image of our Maker, which is our assigned destiny from creation. If we have been pliable and have yielded ourselves to the hammer blows of life so that our character begins to resemble Jesus,then the fifty or sixty years are as the blink of an eye. But if we have fussed and fumed and crawled off the anvil, become vindictive, hardened and unyielding, then the years will seem long and wasted--and we are twisted, angry and defeated and yelling at God, "Why have you made me thus?" It makes all the diffeence if we from the beginning acknowledge that God is the Molder and Maker of our lives. It is how we react to the hammer blows and heat that determines who we become when life's short minute is over. Only then can He straighten out the kinks and form us into His own image. Anvil time is rigorous, but a life molded into His blessed image is well worth it.

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