Threshing Floors

"On that day Gad went to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” So David went up, as the Lord had commanded through Gad. Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”
“To buy your threshing floor,” David answered, “so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.”
Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever pleases him and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. O king, Araunah gives all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the Lord your God accept you.”
But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it.
I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them.
Excerpts from 2 Samuel 24:18-25

"Then Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David."
2 Chronicles 3:1

Threshing is a process where whole wheat stalks, and anything that looks like wheat (tares, weeds) are thrown onto the threshing floor, and then beaten, tossed, shaken, and beaten repeatedly, separating the grains on wheat from the chaff. It is a violently actively process designed to separate and purify.
It was while I lived in Israel that I first discovered that the place that Solomon built the Bet HaKnesset haGadol, the Temple, was the very threshing floor David bought from Araunah! I still wonder and marvel at the fact the God chose the resting place for the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies to be the threshing floor, not an oasis like En Gedi, or Eden...a threshing floor. Somehow, threshing, brokenness, refining, purity, surrender are tied together with worship, entering into His presence, holiness, abiding and communing with our Master/Bridegroom, in ways I feel in my heart, but can't even put words to...
Threshing, a synonym of refining, is part of our lives. The refining we experience, while difficult, is never without purpose, it's part of the process our Father uses to "beat the chaff" out of us. When finally we surrender, what's left is pure, polished, bright, and shiny. The Bridegroom is ironing the wrinkles out the the Bride's wedding dress...
John the Baptizer proclaimed that the "chaff would be gathered up and thrown into the unquenchable fire" (Luke 3:17, Matt 3:12)...when we are going through trials, "on the threshing floor", let us embrace the process, knowing the end result, and not be caught with any chaff clinging to us!