“My brothers and sisters, whenever you face
trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the
testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full
effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.”
— James 1:2-4 (NRSV)
When it humbles us, we are to
consider life an impassable joy; that we have, what is, momentary awareness,
the jangling of feelings, yet God holds us as okay.
The very fact of our experiential
selves is tantalising. Rather than by a dearth of sickliness we approach our
challenges in remembrances of joy—by simple awareness of God’s faithfulness and
that to believe is choice: to go against the grain of the prevailing self that shelters
us from the feeling within our pain and discomfort.
***
Taken further in, we know that by
facing our pain and that discomfort of dread that God will be for us, a Rock,
and we’ll be strengthened by our faith to face up in this way.
We don’t go into such pain and
discomfort—for faith’s prize—without every sort of reasonable support we can
lay our hands on; going there with all the support won’t make the challenge
easy, just easier; more tolerable.
And growing our faith in these
ways, to the fullness of maturity, is a lifelong process with no shortcuts. Why
would we want to shortcut the process and render ourselves incapable of it
because it was too much? God’s not greedy in requiring us to grow beyond our
limits—his grace is eternally sufficient.
***
What this means, in simple terms,
is maturity is the destination of being able to bear, even endure, the painful
and uncomfortable. Such is the Christian calling. And through Christ there is
no better way.
We may think that considering such
difficulty pure joy is some sadistic thing. It’s never that at all. We only
endure these things because God, by his will, has purposed them for us through
the way our lives are turning out. The Lord loves us so much it’s his desire we
grow. And God has faith in us that we can endure.
God is known so fundamentally in
the quiet, darker spaces of life, where there’s no place to run and no place to
hide. Only there can we find the truer urgent Presence abiding with us. And
from a distance away from such darkness we’ll truly recall the beautiful joy we
experienced even in the shrill pain—where we met our Saviour.
***
The more we’re humbled the more
opportunity we have to grow in stately godliness. The more things happen
against us the more God is for us, by our responses of faith to endure
patiently those horrible moments.
Considering life pure joy, even
when it disagrees violently with our notions of joy, is living life
victoriously. It’s not denying our feelings, but feeling the full force of them
in the all-sufficient grace of God, and growing anyway.
Considering life pure joy, not
despite our circumstances, but in spite of them, is about trusting God; it’s about rejecting the
temptation to lean on our own shallow understanding. God always vindicates our
faith; to never stop trusting.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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