Inside/Outside

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from the Synaxarion:

"As for the Three Children, Ananias ("Yah is gracious"), Misael ("Whois what God is?), and Azarias ("Yah is keeper"), since they refused to offer adoration to Nabuchodonosor's image, they were cast intothe furnace of fire. They were preserved unharmed amidst the flames -even their hair was untouched - by the descent of the Angel of theLord, that is, the Son of God. Walking about in the furnace, as though in the midst of dew, they sang the universal hymn of praise to God,which is found in the Seventh and Eighth Odes of the Holy Psalter."

We always sing about the three holy youths' rest and refreshment in the fiery furnace. But listening to the whole story last night at vespers, it occurred to me that perhaps this rest and refreshment didn't begin in the furnace, but was already present inside the youths--in their own internal experience of having come through to a place of both steadfastness and self-abandonment, as expressed in their response to the king:

"...we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Thus, it could be that their experience in the furnace was actually an outward manifestation of the interior state of trust in God that the youths had already achieved in the fiery furnace of their own sanctification.

"Not gold by nature, they were manifested as more proven than gold..."

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