Refiner's Fire

Dedicated to my brother Keith. An excerpt from a book I came across:

"When God wants to use a man, He will often put him through a discipline of lonelines as He did these great biblical saints. Spiritual maturity and qualification for service is often brought about by suffering. There are no short cuts to spirituality. Valleys of discouragement often come before the mountains of victory; pain before pleasure; hurt before honor; and crisis before Christ-likeness. Thus, one of the key purposes of loneliness is to crowd us to Christ and force us to faith. God is more concerned with our holiness than with our present happiness, and so the process of sanctification is often a very painful one. "

Keith - even through your period of loneliness in the hospital bed, God is watching over you and preparing you for a huge task.