One of the Bible verses that has entranced me for over twenty years now is this from James 1:2 —
“Consider it pure joy, my fellow believers, whenever you face trials of many kinds…”
Of course, this is followed up with key verses, arguably the rest of the letter, that unpack this seemingly absurd utterance. That’s the wisdom of James. I think that the context of the whole document is James 1:2 — for trials are common to the human experience, and it’s only godly wisdom that gets us through — indeed, it’s the way to get through.
Faced with trials we could do worse
than read James from first to last,
then think and pray, reflect and lament,
allowing God’s Spirit to do His work
in and through us.
But most of us aren’t that disciplined to trust God at His Word. We generally prefer what seems to be our default way — either suffer every bit of the pain with complaint (which is not altogether bad) OR we deny the pain and completely bypass its purpose.
Pain has a purpose. C.S. Lewis said this:
“Pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts on our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
When pain enters our life it’s as if the quietest sound is deafening. And grief keeps us in this state for months if not years. It changes us, transforming our sensibilities, making us in part more prone to pain and in part more empathetic.
Once pain has gripped us and has held on, once we’ve been contained by pain for any length of time, once we’ve been forced to be conformed to it, it breaks us or it breaks us open — the latter is part of the biblical process that James speaks of: it humbles us and makes us greater.
Being broken open with faith in God is a form of the ‘deeper magic’, as C.S. Lewis would put it, that brings the power of the gospel to life IN our life. This is the life that Casting Crowns refer to in their song, Praise You In The Storm.
Against human expectations in suffering, expecting God would pluck us out of our peril, realising that’s not how life or God works, we stand on the precipice of a choice — to praise Him anyway.
In praising through tears of brokenness,
we are broken open, and in that very moment,
His grace works in and through us!
It’s here we recognise that suffering
takes us to a place of learning
what we could not learn otherwise.
What I describe above is one expression of the extension of James 1:2 through the remainder of the chapter and perhaps the whole book of five chapters.
God’s wisdom is applied in faith —
i.e., it is something we must DO —
that operates absolutely opposite
to the world’s wisdom that
makes ‘common sense’ but doesn’t help.
Rare is it that any of us would take God at His Word and set our faces like flint at the task of enduring — not so much without complaint, but with repetitive composure that continually turns back, gritting one’s teeth in audacious hope underpinned by a joy borrowed from better times.
A joy borrowed from a future hope having transcended our suffering is a faith that must be APPLIED for that hope to be realised.
Injustice cannot be righted by simply railing against it, which is our human default response. Paradoxically, suffering joyfully is the best hope of righting injustice.
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