Reflecting Jesus in our Lives...this is often painful!

I found this story on the blogsphere....

"I read a story of a woman who was involved in a small group and in the course of the small group, they were reading from... Malachi 3:3: "He will sit and judge like a refiner of silver, watching closely as the dross is burned away."

And in this small group, they ask the question, "What is dross? What does this mean? What does a silversmith actually do?"

So she said, "Okay, next week, before we meet, I will go out, see a silversmith and I will figure out exactly what a silversmith does."

So she went down, she met with a jeweller and he began to show her how he worked with silver.

He said, "You gotta put the silver right in the middle of the hottest part of the fire. The silver has to be so hot that it will melt and the dross in it can be brushed away; that's the crud and such that’s in the silver when you mine it."

And she watched as he was doing it. She said, "Do you have to stay there?"

And he said, "Oh yes, you have to keep staring at it, you have to keep watching it because if you don’t watch it, it could ruin the silver."

And then she said, "How do you know when the silver is ready?"

He said, "I know the silver is ready when I can see my reflection in it."

Lord, I want to reflect you so clearly that it is evident when the world looks at me, they see Jesus not me. More of you, less of me.