Lord, we desire this morning to contemplate with admiration your ways toward us. You have put some of us into the furnace: There is no child of yours who does not know something of the heat of the furnace; and we perceive that you are a refiner to us, and that the fire is meant to consume our dross and tin; therefore do we thank you for it.
For all the acts of discipline to which we are subject, we would praise the wisdom and the love of our divine Father. You would not have us live in sin; sin is much worse than furnace work. All the trial in the world is not so hard to carry as a sense of sin.