Rock Candy

I have saturation on my mind again. Strange, I know. I believe, with all that is in me, that God communicates with us in ways that often only make sense to each person individually. I have always learned well from object lessons... and so saturation leads me to rock candy and the experiments I vividly remember in Mr. Jensen's 7th grade Earth Sciences class. So I'm remembering and trying to process what God is doing.

Rock candy is easy to make. It's even easy to understand how it works. It is a fairly uncomplicated yet amazing process and the results are beautiful and delicious. Basically, sugar is dissolved into water until it can't dissolve even one more tiny crystal. Then you hang a string in the liquid and wait for the water to evaporate causing the sugar to reform as large crystals on the string. Viola! Lovely Rock Candy. Sounds simple, but like everything else in life, there are a few tricks to getting this to work and actually get the end result you want.

First, the water. You can use regular water, just the water that comes right out of your kitchen faucet. BUT, you must put it in a pan and begin heating it. You then add as much sugar as will dissolve in the pan and keep heating until it reaches a rolling boil, all the while stirring and adding sugar. The average ratio is about 4 cups of sugar to about 2 cups of water. This process is called 'super-saturation' and it's actually unstable in that it contains more solute (sugar) than can stay in liquid form, so it must change. This is also a dangerous process and one we were warned to do only under adult supervision at home. Boiling water burns briefly when you get a drop on your skin and can cause a painful burn if spilled. Sugar water becomes a syrup that can burn and sticks to your skin as it continues to burn. You must have this unstable and dangerous concoction to make rock candy. A couple drops of flavoring extract and/or food coloring may be added at this point to flavor and color the final result.


Next this liquid is transferred to a clear glass jar. A cotton string is dipped in the sugar water and then laid out to dry. As the water evaporates from the string, tiny 'seed crystals' will form and provide the starting point for larger crystals. After the string is dry (about 2 days) you can then drop the string back into the water, securing the end with a pencil or dowel across the top, and covering lightly with plastic wrap. The jar should be placed in a cool place, out of direct
light. And then you wait.

As the water evaporates, the sugar in the solution will solidify, ideally on the string with the seed crystals, creating large sugar crystals (monoclinic hemihedral crystalline structures) which are amazingly the exact crystal shape of the tiny sugar crystals the whole process started with. Within a few days to a week, the string can be removed and you have delicious, beautiful rock candy.

So... what, besides a fun science project, have I learned? At the very least:

* Life, in the most basic sense, is normal or common like water, and it is only by making judicious additions to it that it becomes something else, something more. What am I adding to my life? What do I choose to be saturated with?

* Rock candy cannot be made until the water is super-saturated, not just water with a sprinkling of sugar, but must have the heat and must have a high content of the final product.

* The seed crystals are important - imagine if a toxic substance were used to begin the crystal growth? It would taste good and look beautiful - Oh so easy to be deceived! Also, the crystals, so tiny to begin with, are the ultimate result, yet BIGGER and BETTER and more LOVELY than a few cups full of granulated sugar...

* Oh - and if the process doesn't work the first time, the best way to fix this is to pour the whole works back into a saucepan and reboil it, starting over in a clear jar - who among us hasn't felt the fire of having to be 'reboiled' as we tried to work our own magic? Uncomfortable, to say the least.

* Ultimately, what kind of crystals and I growing? Am I growing any at all? What flavor and color am I? Or do I look like a lukewarm glass of water with dust floating on top? And most importantly, what am I saturated with? What do people see? I hope they see God moving in my life. I hope they feel Jesus loving them. I hope they feel the indescribable Holy Spirit touching them. I want to be saturated, I want to be supersaturated so God can create something beautiful.

I would love to hear your story of saturation.