How Adversity Endured is the Worthiest Achievement

WE MAY achieve very much in this life, but what really makes us is what dissolves us; that is, what breaks us down reveals us — who we are from who we are becoming. And who we are becoming is by far more important.

It’s not what we make of ourselves that makes us; it’s how God holds us through adversity that makes us.

The more we acknowledge God, who holds us up, where the wheels of life have fallen off, the more we are made by our adversities.

We make ourselves and we make comparatively nothing of ourselves. We are just more prone to pride. It’s the grandeur of narcissistic folly.

This is nothing against the person who has achieved greatly in their field of expertise. It’s not about assuming their world is built like a house of cards. But the true tests of a person’s life are those that have little to do with their accolades of aplomb.

The down-and-outer is a person who may have achieved little, but there is no correlation between their lack of achievement and their poise in a crisis.

Crises build within us the patient resolve to do what must be done. To handle crises, then, is the best type of achievement. Those crises, especially, that push us in our faith, that stretch us, these are the adversities that dissolve us into a better solution for the future.

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Let’s not be too bitter about the persons or situations that have blindsided us. God knew that these would make us stronger, more capable, more pliable, and less worthy in our own achievements.

We are only what God makes us. Only what God makes of us matters. All else is vain folly, especially if our achievements — which can be taken away at any time — mean the world to us.

What means most in life are the things that take no effort to attain; they are given. All we need to do is maintain them when most of us do our best to make a hash of it.

We cannot say we ‘achieved’ a family, because love is never an achievement. But to work away through the trials and tribulations of marriage, now that’s an achievement.

If we are to glory in any sense of achievement we should, all the more, glory in God’s all-sustaining grace that has underpinned us throughout.

If we have endured much adversity we have acquired the loftier achievement.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.