Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 140 · May 20
If Need Be
“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:”
Gold in a shallow clay dish inside a furnace, and a man beside it drawing off whatever rises to the top.
Peter is writing to Christians scattered across five provinces and he never says why the trouble came, only what it is doing. The trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire. Gold is the hardest and least corruptible substance those readers could name, and it is the perishable one in the sentence.
One verse earlier there is a phrase most readings walk straight past. Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. If need be. Peter allows that some heaviness is needed, and then declines to say which, or who decides, or how a person inside it could ever tell. Job said the same from further in: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. He said it with no information whatever, and the four chapters God speaks to him at the end explain nothing about chapter one. Proverbs puts the assay office and the heart in one line: The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts.
What Peter gives in place of a reason is a destination and a date. Might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. He leaves it open whose praise and honour and glory that is, whether it lands on the faith, on you, or on the one appearing. The date is fixed and it is not in your hands. By then the gold in the dish will be gone and the thing being tested will still be there.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 140 is Preserved by Love (Psalm 145:20).