Finding Jesus in the Furnace

“The day we received my first cancer diagnosis, my husband and I sat down with our (then) six-year-old son to tell him the news. Jeremy shed some tears and hugged me tight. I locked eyes with him and said, “This is hard, isn’t it, bud? It’s not good news. But God is with us, and he turns everything for our good. Everything.” Jeremy paused, then asked if we could read the story of “the fiery furnace.” My husband opened the Bible to Daniel 3 and read of King Nebuchadnezzar’s intimidating gold statue, threatening edict, and furious rage at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when they refused to bow down. You know how the story goes: after the men had been bound and thrown into the fiery inferno… My husband finished the story and closed the Bible, and after a pause Jeremy said, “There are four of us in this family.” In his suffering, a six-year-old looked and saw that God was with us in our own fiery furnace. He was given eyes to see Jesus standing with us in the flames. ‘” - Finding Jesus in the Furnace by Colleen Chao