I
think I’ve told you I’ve been studying James this month. Our Sunday School
class is reading through it together, and then this week I started doing
Darlene Schacht’s new study on it. You might remember that at the beginning of
the first chapter, he writes about counting it all joy when we face trials of
many kinds.
That’s
not easy. It’s not natural. It’s not fun. But it is written right there
as something we should do.
Darlene’s
study encouraged us to not just throw out a “thanks for the trials,” but to
specifically name the trials in front of us and count them as joy.
I
got out my journal and started naming.
I
noticed that as I started naming them, I was also able to more easily see how to
count them as joy. For each thing that brought trial to me, I worked to find
how it could also be a joy. I searched for blessings in the messes. I searched
for answers to prayer even while unanswered prayers remained.
The
longer I did it, the easier it became. It turns out there is more good happening
in my own trials than I even realized. Don’t misunderstand me. The trials are
still hard. Some of them are nearly suffocating. But in them, there is good.
There IS joy.
And
as the verses in James go on to say, the trials do a good work. They exercise
the muscles of my faith and help me grow and strengthen my relationship with
God. That is a joy, too!
If
you feel surrounded by hard mountains to climb, I encourage you to name the
trials and look for joy in them!
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