Third Wednesday in Advent

Of Fire and Soap

In describing the coming of the Lord, the prophet Malachi used two similes to describe the cleansing God will bring for his people. 

First, there’s a refiner’s fire. In ancient times silver miners dug treasure by digging holes. Because silver is an alloy metal, such miners almost always found silver in an impure form, mixed with other metals. The most ancient form of refining silver—a method silversmiths still use—is called cupellation. Cupellation involves mixing silver with melted lead in a crucible that goes into an extremely hot furnace. Such a “refiner’s fire” melts the lead, absorbing it in the crucible and leaving the pure silver in a ball. A silversmith may repeat this process several times to achieve absolute purity.

 Someone once asked an old silversmith how he knew when to stop refining metal in the fire. “When I can see my face in it,” he said. God promises to refine his people until he can “see his face” in them, too— that is, until they reflect his character. 

 Malachi’s second simile was from the laundry room: “He will be like… launderer’s soap.”  If you’ve seen the movie, “A Christmas Story,” you’ve seen what happens when Ralphie’s character curses. His mom sticks a fresh bar of Lifebuoy soap in his mouth. Ew-w-w. The soap serves as a picture of what Ralphie needs—a cleaner tongue.

 When my four siblings and I were little, if we used naughty language, my mother would give us similar treatment. There’s nothing like the threat of a fat chunk of Ivory to make a kid think twice about what flies out of his or her mouth.

 The purpose of soap is to cleanse. And the tougher the stain, the harsher the treatment. When my dad used to get his hands greasy working on the car, he didn’t wash with Lifebuoy or Ivory. He pulled out Lava soap, the heavy-duty cleaner that’s like forty-grit sandpaper. And when I get a spaghetti sauce stain on my blouse, I take it to the “cleaners,” because they have the launderers’ soap, the “soap on steroids” for treating serious stains and brightening fabric. 

 Through two metaphors, fire and soap, God communicates in creative ways what he desires from his people: purified lives. In the future he promises a wholesale, national cleansing of his people with fire and extra-strength soap.  

 Are you in the fire? Are you feeling the sandpaper soap? Submit your will to God. Invite him to change you. Ask for the grace to cooperate with his refining process that you might shine, purified and spotless.  —Sandra Glahn 

Prayer by John Donne: 

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you 

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend 

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 

I, like an usurp’d town to another due, 

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; 

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, 

But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. 

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, 

But am betroth’d unto your enemy; 

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, 

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 

   –John Donne, 16th century

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead

And his kingdom will have no end.

Photo credit: Jason Leung on Unsplash; Donne poem is in the public domain