When things take a turn from bad to worse, we might say that we’ve gone out of the frying pan and into the fire. When given the choice between being in the frying pan and directly in the heart of the fire, it would seem like the smart move would be to choose the lesser of two evils and stay in the frying pan. But we’re still going to get burnt to a crisp if we stay in the frying pan, so is it really better? An important part of our mortal experience is to pass through the refiner’s fire in the furnace of affliction. We are all going to spend time in the furnace of affliction. There’s no getting around it. We may think that entering into that oven with the relative protection of a frying pan to shield us from the naked flames could be an advantage, but one of the most important parts of the refiner’s fire is to, well, refine us. The flames burn away the dross and leave only the pure metal behind. But if we stay in our frying pans, then we still melt from the fervent heat, but the dross has nowhere to go and we just end up sloshing around the frying pan in our own filth with no refinement taking place. We can tell ourselves that our suffering is too great, that we’ve been asked to endure more than we can bear, that we don’t deserve this and can’t cope with it on our own and we give way to fear and doubt and vice and isolation and just generally shut down. Clinging to the frying pan does not save us from the heat. It only stops us from receiving the benefits and the main purpose of being in the refiner’s fire in the first place. When we choose to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, facing our suffering with an open and a willing heart, in all humility, then we allow through that refining process for some of what should be the worst moments of our lives to be transformed into some of the best experiences of our lives, because all the dross of our fear and doubt and weakness is burned away and we are left with pure hearts that are filled with the love of God.
