The Quickest Way to True Happiness – Deal with the Dross

Anyone who sees what I write knows I think a lot about refinement; I see opportunities all the time for advancing my character and I like to share these because, quite frankly, I can’t be that unique!

As I sat in a church service just recently, I felt the Spirit whisper three words a short space apart from each other. These words were redundancy--waste--dross. And this was all in the one image. The image was the adipose on someone’s upper arm. The meaning of the image was there’s no purpose to it. It was a redundancy, a waste, not necessary; pure dross.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary tells us that ‘dross’ is essentially impurity: “the scum that forms on the surface of molten metal; waste or foreign matter; something that is base, trivial, or inferior.”

Dross gets burned off, or skimmed from the top of that molten metal. There’s no use to it.

The thought was, the purpose of life must be about ‘expunging’ this redundancy, waste and dross in our lives. The Spirit told me to write about ‘expunging it.’ And that’s what I do.

Life is a process of perfecting what we’ve been given; our bodies, minds and souls. It’s identifying dross in our lives and dealing with it... banishing it.

The quickest way to true happiness is ironically the hardest, but it is worth every bit of the journey.

The purest sense of happiness, I believe, is found in purifying ourselves of our dross:

“As the refining pot for silver and the furnace for gold [bring forth all the impurities of the metal], so let a man be in his trial of praise [ridding himself of all that is base or insincere; for a man is judged by what he praises and of what he boasts].”

–Proverbs 27:21 (Amplified version).

Again,

“Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth [the material for] a vessel for the silversmith [to work up]. Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne will be established in righteousness (moral and spiritual rectitude in every area and relation).”

–Proverbs 25:4-5 (Amplified version).

As taking away wickedness from the king promotes harmony within the realm of his rule, so expunging the waste and dross from our lives promotes every good thing in our beings.

This is why we ought to fully invest in a life of Spiritually-led self-improvement. We must be prepared to identify habits, positions, circumstances and arrangements we find ourselves in that are not helpful, and then get rid of them or transform them into good things; silver or gold.

Burn away the dross and there’s silver and gold to be found in each one of us.

This is quintessentially our very personal purpose in life, amongst few other things. And nothing else will quite bring us the same reward of happiness as this particular venture.

Copyright © 2009, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.