Someone once told a story something like this: A beautiful gold vase had been placed on a shelf in a goldsmith's workshop. It was just fresh from the hands of the engraver, and very chaste and lovely it looked. In the same room there was a nugget of gold which was being beaten into shape. It was complaining of all it had borne and still had to go through. "Oh," it said to the vase, "how I wish I were like you! When will these dreadful blows be over?"
"You wish to be like me?" asked the vase. "Then hush! for were it not for the fire and the beating, though you would still be gold, there would be no shape and very little beauty to be seen in you. The master knows what he is about, and he loves us too much to give us one stroke too little."
"One stroke too little." There is the bright side though we do not, as a rule, think so. We far oftener take comfort in thinking that our Lord and Master loves us too well to give us "one stroke too many." But there is as much comfort to be found in knowing that "the LORD will perfect that which concerneth me" (Psalm 138:8; Phil. 1:6), as there is in believing that "He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust." Psalm 103:14. We need to take them both together and, whatever the trial, to hear Him say, "He doth not afflict willingly" (Lam. 3:33); and though (like the gold in the story) we feel the fire and the chastening, yet let us rejoice in the knowledge that "nevertheless [in spite of all], afterward IT [that very chastening which we felt so keenly, produces what was lacking; for it] yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." Heb. 12:11.