Daily Devotion

Sunday, February 1, 2026  

Today's Scripture
Malachi 3:1–4

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years. (NRSV)

My uncle stepped onto the front porch one summer day, carrying a thin length of rusted metal. It appeared to be gripping a charcoal briquet that had seen better days. Now, treasures of numerous sorts frequently emerged from the grounds around our family cottage — weathered glass bottles, ceramic fragments — so those of us on the porch settled in for a good story.

“Anyone know what this is?” It turns out we lacked enough background in metallurgy to answer. The piece relates to blacksmithing work, he explained, because this was a tool of that trade. Two long metal pieces, fused together with rust? They were tongs. And that black chunk held in their grip? Flux. Wait, flux? Yes, a substance added to the heating process that could help bend, weld, or place a finish on metal. Smithing depended on heat, but flux created refinements that fire alone could not produce.

Malachi’s analogy of the refiner’s fire might seem severe to the contemporary mind, so let’s explore it, using George MacDonald (1824–1905) as our guide. In sermons and novels, MacDonald portrayed the “consuming fire” as God’s determination to remove what was impure — malign, corruptible, sinful — from all lives.

But life is complicated. What happens to the concept of purity when one is set up, or forced to make a bad decision, or tricked into a devil’s bargain? Is such a person banished from achieving purity? Could they accomplish it through some mystical fire of God? Or through pilgrimages, or sacrifice, or outward declarations of sinfulness?

MacDonald offers yet another path for consideration. One that comes not from without, but from within our very selves. “If you care to see God,” he wrote, “be pure.” Simply that. But with this admonition: “If you will not be pure, you will grow more and more impure; and instead of seeing God, will at length find yourself face to face with a vast inane (a noun meaning void or emptiness) — a vast inane, yet filled full of one inhabitant, that devouring monster, your own false self” (from “God’s Family,” in Life Essential: The Hope of the Gospel, George MacDonald, originally published in 1892). God may well touch our lives with that purifying fire, yet we are not mere bystanders, for the inner desire of purity can only draw us closer to God.

Prayer

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Reclothe us in our rightful mind;
in purer lives thy service find,
in deeper rev’rence, praise. Amen.

(From John Greenleaf Whitter’s hymn “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind,” revised.)

Reflection written by Sarah Forbes Orwig, Member of Fourth Presbyterian Church

Reflection © Fourth Presbyterian Church

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