But who can endure the day of his coming?
Who can stand when he appears?
For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.
Malachi 3:2

While looking at pictures of burning buildings in Japan after the earthquake,  it is wholly evident that much of the infrastructure in the effected areas is being completely consumed by fire, if it wasn’t swept away in the waves.  It is being quickly destroyed,  to eventually be rebuilt from the ground up.  There is nothing but debris, nothing left to salvage.

Yet we are told that God does not destroy his people like these buildings are destroyed.  Instead our debris and impurities are wiped away, as if painfully scrubbed by soap or refined by fire.  We are left whole, intact and unsullied.

Only then can we be ready for what is to come.