Refiner's Fire (Amy Carmichael again!)

P.86 of "Gold Cord" (in italics)
" And we learned more than we taught. One day we took the children to see a goldsmith refine gold after the ancient manner of the East. He was sitting beside his little charcoal-fire. ("He shall sit as a refiner": the gold- or silversmith never leaves his crucible once it is on the fire.) In the red glow lay a common curved roof-tile; another tile covered it like a lid. This was the crucible. In it was the medicine made of salt, tamarind fruit and burnt brickdust, and embedded in it was the gold. The medicine does its appointed work on the gold, "then the fire eats it," and the goldsmith lifts the gold out with a pair of tongs, lets it cool, rubs it between his fingers, and if not satisfied puts it back again in fresh medicine. This time he blows the fire hotter than it was before, and each time he puts the gold into the crucible the heat of the fire is increased: "It could not bear it so hot at first, but it can bear it now; what would have destroyed it then helps it now." "How do you know when the gold is purified?" we asked him, and he answered, "When I can see my face in it [the liquid gold in the crucible] then it is pure."

The fact is that in our logical, flawed human minds we think that pain is the equivalent of God's dissatisfaction, we think that pain is bad and that trial cannot possibly help us. But God's purposes are greater than our mental capacities; God plans to use each experience of our lives for the calling of people to him, and for His glory.
With all that in mind, isn't it comforting to know that He (the one who allows us to be purified in the crucible) never leaves his crucible once its been put on the fire?

Friends, let's endure this flame - painful though it is - and trust that his purposes are being made manifest in us.

Love, Tiff