I was reading online about how swords are forged (don't ask) when I came across this paragraph and thought how it applied to our lives as Christians. The last two sentences really caught my attention.

"A skilled blacksmith would be able to take semi-refined ore, and look at it, and evaluate it and figure out the best way to make a good sword blade. Ore is different in different regions, containing different trace elements, and some of these would have been good for a blade, making it tougher, or they may have enabled the blacksmith to put a slightly harder edge on it, or heat-treat it to a higher degree. Ores from other regions wouldn't have made for as good a sword, and so, if necessary and possible, the blacksmith would have blended different supplies, welding or twisting different sections together. Access to a good ore supply would have avoided having to go through that level of process; it would also have made the sword less expensive.

When the blacksmith had bought a quantity of semi-refined ore he would heat up his own, much smaller furnace and begin a further process of refining, this time beating and hammering it to push out any slag residue (this would show up as dark fragments within the glowing core of iron). This process would continue for as long as necessary, depending of the quality of steel he wanted. Iron would become steel when it had had sufficient quantity of carbon and other minerals introduced into it during the forging process. Ore was separated into two grades, the high-grade ore being used for weapons and the low-grade for armour. What was left was called a bloomery mass, which was a lump of iron mixed in with a small amount of slag and other residue. The blacksmith then repeatedly heated it, hammered it and stretched it out, trying to get the slag out; he would fold the red-hot back in on itself, welding it back together, beating it out again, trying to extract as much good molten iron from the mass as possible. This was the process now known as folding and stretching. It was principally to refine the iron, to get rid of the impurities and produce a consistent piece of quality steel. Once this had been performed enough times he would have a piece of steel that was fit for a sword.

From there, making a sword by forging was really just a question of a shaping process. All of the real work had been done in the refining."

God's main work in shaping our lives isn't directing us to a specific task, but in refining us so that we will be sufficient for the task which He has chosen for us.

http://www.lordoftherings.net/legend/weapons/