“Don’t run from tests and hardships, brothers and sisters. As difficult as they are, you will
ultimately find joy in them; if you embrace them, your faith will blossom
under pressure and teach you
true patience as you endure. And
true patience brought on by endurance will equip you to complete the long
journey and cross the finish
line—mature, complete, and wanting nothing.”
~James
1:2-3. The Voice
These words are hard to read and even harder to
embrace. None of us desire to have hardships in our lives. But, as we well
know, hardships do come our way.
I’ve noticed several of my younger friends express
their pain and upsetness over situations in their lives. They just want to be
happy and have everything go their way. All the time.
‘If I just had a perfect husband, a perfect family,
a perfect home, all the money I needed, the education and job of my dreams,’
the list goes on and on. And somehow we think somebody else got all that but we
were gypped. I used to think that way. However, as I’ve grown older and,
hopefully, wiser, I’ve learned that none of us have perfect
lives with everything we could ever want and/ or achieve. We live in a fallen
world. Nothing and nobody is perfect. We ALL will have troubles.
However, this verse gives us sound advice: ‘if we
embrace our tests and hardship’, notice the word ‘if’? What will happen? ‘Our faith will blossom under pressure and
we will develop patience.” What awaits us at the end of the line? Maturity, completeness
and we will want for nothing.
Now that
is worth waiting for!
