Today's Daily Lesson comes from James chapter 1 verses 2 through 4:
2 My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; 4 and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
Yesterday I was talking with some close friends about challenges we have come through and are in some sense still in. One of them said, "We have learned a lot through all this. We have had too much pain not to learn something."
Pain can be a great teacher if we allow it to be. We can learn from what it has to say to us. We can deepen and grow because of having to experience it.
James says pain, or what he calls "trials" are what mature us. We must go through them that we may be tested, endure, and truly grow up. It is painful, but necessary. So he tells us we should even learn to take "joy" when the trials come our way.
I honestly don't know that I'm ready to consider it ALL joy. But I do remember something Maya Angelou said which helps:
"I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it."
There is a certain kind of fierce joy that comes from knowing we have not been reduced. For we have endured. And we have learned. And we have grown along the way.
And for all this we can honestly thank God, for the mettle has been tested and tempered, and we are still here -- cracked, yet even more beautiful vessels with wisdom inside.
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. Tomorrow we are back into the book of Acts, chapters 15 and 16.
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