We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. ~ Helen Keller
James 1
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
I know that it's quite easy to quote these verses from the Book of James and another thing altogether to embrace them. "Consider it pure joy" when trials come our way? Come on now! "Consider it pure joy" when life brings its worst and causes pain and heartbreak? You've got to be kidding! Nice thoughts for the great saints perhaps but not exactly where the average one of us happens to be.
Like you I have to reflect rather extensively to appreciate what James is saying here.
None of us would choose great adversity to learn life's great lessons but on the other hand none of us can deny that our spiritual and emotional maturity has been woven through the fabric of life's great challenges. Each of us would avoid, if we could, all the challenges and heartaches life brings us and yet none of us would be who we are in strength and wisdom today without having faced them.
At the heart of this awareness and acceptance is a statement of faith...that God does indeed bring good out of whatever we face in life. This doesn't mean, of course, that in the middle of the storm I can see or know the good God plans to bring but it does mean that I can seek to stay the course trusting that somehow, someway God will work for my good.
According to James, the foremost contribution of adversity in our lives is perseverance. Over time, through thick and thin, amidst days of great joy and times of real anguish, we're each being shaped and formed as persons who can handle what life brings. As the old saying goes, we can bend but we need not break. Thus, among the good God brings to us as we face these life challenges is that He is shaping us for the full journey ahead.
Just as we parents and grandparents know that our children will not mature and learn to persevere in life without facing some real challenges and even heartbreaks in life, so God has designed the journey of life in such a way that with our trials we grow in wisdom, we grow in inner strength, and we grow in perseverance. While we still may not consider life's vicissitudes as "pure joy", we can know that we are becoming our better and stronger selves by God's divine plan.
