When I saw the Five Minute Friday prompt (over at Heading Home) was the word REFINED, I decided to join in for the first time ever. I had just seen something in my Facebook newsfeed about being refined from a Christian point of view. It's one of those dozens of videos we've all seen that start playing silently as we scroll by. Something about it caught my eye and I continued to read the scrolling words.
The gist of it was about the process used to purify and refine silver. Such is the nature of FB newsfeeds, that if you don't share or save a link or video, it is quickly swallowed up into Facebook land and never seen again. Unless another friend also shares it. The video is that of a woman who left her Bible study determined to talk to a silversmith about the following verse.
She asked the smithy to explain the process. He told her how he used heat to remove the impurities from the silver and he had to watch the entire process very carefully so he did not miss the moment it was complete. Before she left, she had one more question. How did he know when the process was complete and the silver was refined. He told her he knew it was ready when he could see himself mirrored on the surface.
The video had the desired effect on me. It drove home a Biblical point in a way many could understand and in a deeper way than just reading the words on the page. But I also need confirmation of "facts" from Facebook newsfeeds. I'm a rabbit trail chaser. So, I spent some time looking up the process using Ye Olde Google. I found this article from the online Encyclopedia Britannica about the refining process and one thing in particular caught my eye.
The lustre of the pure metal is due to its electron configuration, which results in its reflecting all electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths longer than 3000 angstroms (3000 angstroms is in the ultraviolet range).
I don't know much about UV and what to make of this sentence in this instance, but it has captured my attention (perhaps another rabbit trail?) and my imagination. What wavelengths do other minerals reflect and absorb? Is this unique to silver?
My friends over at Webster's Dictionary had an assortment of definitions to choose from, as usual. The two that I thought most applied to Psalm 66:10 were this verb transitive:
2. Applied to metals, to separate the metallic substance from all other matter, whether another metal or alloy, or any earthy substance; in short, to detach the pure metal from all extraneous matter.
And this verb intransitive (and now another rabbit trail, learn what transitive/intransitive means).
2. to become pure; to be cleared of feculent matter.
Yuck!
And, as I suspected, Five Minute Friday prompts will, indeed, take me more than five minutes to complete. Is anyone who knows me surprised by that? You shouldn't be.
