Improving My Mettle

by Christine Humphrey, Secondary Science Teacher

The other night I happened to watch a TV show that demonstrated how they believed early steel might have been produced. Two gentlemen stood there with a giant lump of iron ore; proceeded to heat it in a furnace and then continued to pound off the slag. Eventually, they had formed some pieces of iron, which was great, except that it wasn’t hard enough to stand up to repeated poundings or use, without eventually breaking. Somewhere along the line (the show continued) these ancients discovered that if you “cooked” the iron with things like leather and cow poo you could make a new material, one that was pretty hard and resistant to breaking – they had made what we now call steel.

I sat there thinking about the fact that in this early form of steel, iron was essentially made harder by some pretty common (and really unpleasant) items. I don’t think the ancients realized what they were actually doing chemically (packing carbon atoms in between the iron atoms), but they knew it produced a better and more useful end product.

This made me think about how a similar process can be at work in my own life. In the day to day things (some big, many small, and some painful or unpleasant), my “mettle” is being “cooked” in the fire of living. If we know Christ as our Savior, scripture assures us that God is working out all things for His glory, and our good. This reminds me that even the unpleasant things that come my way serve a purpose in my life. I can either allow them to strengthen me with God’s help, or I can be overcome by their commonness or unpleasantness.

At the end of the segment, the two men opened up the container where they had cooked their iron, leather and cow manure. All that you could see was a piece of dingy metal and the ashes that surrounded it. Upon further treatment, however, by heating, pounding and polishing- the hard steel blade emerged. It was a metal that had been improved. I pray that I will allow God to improve my own mettle by His heating, pounding and polishing.