The Good Work that God Seeks to Accomplish in Us

In Luke's Gospel, John the Baptist uses the metaphor of a threshing floor to describe what God seeks to accomplish in our souls.

The metaphor of a threshing floor would have been very familiar with John's listeners.  The threshing floor was the place where harvested wheat was placed; the harvested wheat contained grain, which was useful and edible, and chaff, which was useless and inedible.  The purpose of the threshing floor was to provide a place where the grain and the chaff were divided, leaving only that which was edible and useful.  The chaff is then burned and destroyed.

God enters into human life bringing grace, so that what is useless in us can be removed, leaving only that which nourishes ourselves, and others.  God seeks to burn away what is useless in us, so that we are purified and made whole, bringing about our own redemption so that we can then be God's instruments to bring about the redemption of the world.

God's agenda in the world has always been, and will always, be, our salvation and redemption, not our destruction.  The only thing that God seeks to destroy is that which is impure within us, so that we might be a new creation in Christ.