So, I haven't blogged since April 18, I think. I only know that because it was the morning after my fourth son, Daniel, was born. In many ways, this has been a wonderful few months as our family has been changed by the recent addition. That part has been pure joy. The other stuff has been that fake farting noise you make when you stick out your tongue and blow.
I don't know if the rest of you have noticed, but it has become increasingly evident to me that this life can be frustrating. Even when things are going well there seems to be a corresponding struggle. You have a baby but you lose your sleep. You get your dream job but the you lose your family. You get married but you feel like you lose your identity. You get your dream house but you now have to clean it... all of it. There are very few things in life that allow for pure joy.
Then there are life's outright difficulties. Your wife has a miscarriage. You suffer the loss of a loved one. You suffer through a painful divorce. Cancer ravages your body. You lose your job. You get foreclosed on. Life is full of frustration, sadness and trial.
Jesus had a little brother named James who suggests that we should view trials as pure joy. That notion is elusive at best and laughable or devastating at worst. We struggle just to view blessing with pure joy. Trials? We tend to view those with contempt. James' perspective is nothing short of revolutionary.
Trials are relative to each of us. I would suggest that if it is a trial for you than you should accept it as such, rather than allowing the significance of someone else's trial to somehow invalidate your own. A trial could be an overheated minivan full of kids en route from Georgia to Kentucky, or it can be the death of your grandmother that was the reason for making that same trip. A trial can be two operations and three days in the hospital with kidney stones and something called a three-way catheter, or it can be your son falling out of his bunk bed and breaking his collar bone. A trial can be 18 months with your house on the market with no end in sight, or it can be a storm rolling through your area and taking a few trees down. A trial can be watching a married couple you love stop loving each other, or it could be the despair of watching people you love turn there back on Jesus for an empty way of life. A trial can be much bigger than these... and much smaller. Some trials are momentary, some are protracted. That's why James says to consider it pure joy when you face trials of "many kinds". He knows the human proclivity toward frustration and dissatisfaction.
Trials, it would seem, are a means for our flesh to prey on our souls in order to foster frustration, sanction sin, and jettison the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet James says, counterintuitively, that trials should be viewed through the lens of joy, in the name of something called perseverance, which finishes it's work. Oh, goody... tell me where to sign.
You can look long and hard to find a verse that says to develop perseverance through success and comfort, but you won't find it in the Christian bible... I've looked. It is only formed on the anvil of trials. If you are like me, you start thinking about thrift store perseverance. I don't necessarily want top of the line, name brand perseverance. I would be completely content with black market or knock off perseverance. But as in everything, you get what you pay for.
The truth is, to view trials through the lens of joy you have to be looking through the scope of eternity. Otherwise, sickness, loss, death, unemployment, pain, loneliness, failure, lack, conflict, and all the frustrations of life are simply that... frustrations. But when they are paraded under the banner of the Gospel, these things are overwhelmed and redeemed by resurrection. When you think about it, perseverance is THE essential character trait for the Christian. Other than faith, which all Christians have in some measure because they are saved by grace through faith, nothing is of more value than perseverance.
If you want to have a great marriage, you have to have perseverance. If you want to raise children who love Jesus, you have to have perseverance. If you want to succeed in any career field, you have to have perseverance. If you want to bear fruit in ministry for the rest of your life, you have to have perseverance. If you want healthy relationships, you have to have perseverance. If you want to be judged at Jesus' death rather than at your own death, you have to have perseverance. All of these things will have their share of frustration... but it's only for a little while. And then Jesus will come and reclaim and restore this world and our lives to their original intent, and frustrations and striving will cease. Frustration will yield to freedom. Sorrow will yield to laughter. Conflict will yield to peace. Death will be swallowed up by life. Until then, consider it all joy and persevere.
After all, this life?... it's just one of those things. It's good to be reminded we don't have to do it again.
