Purified Gold - Reawakenings cd 4 track 19

Purified Gold Reawakenings cd4 track 19 Loeillet - sonata for treble recorder, keyboard and cello The passage, written by Amy Carmichael, the great missionary to South India, was the inspiration for this track. It is set to the first movement of a lovely recorder sonata by Jean Baptiste Loeillet. I was joined in playing it by Corinne Frost and Christiane von Albrecht, on cello and piano respectively. One day we took the children [a group of Indian orphans] 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 brick-dust, 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." "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" (Gold Cord pp. 69-70.) I am surely not alone in knowing exactly how easy it is for even seemingly tiny adverse circumstances to cause dross to rise, first in my heart and then to shoot of my mouth. Lord of the Refiner's Fire, please continue Your gracious, patient work in each one of us!