The Gift of Trials
Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.- James 1:2-4, Message
Ever feel ovewhelmed with your situation? Don’t know where you are going to get the money for presents, let alone the mortgage? In a job situation doing something you hate? Got a medical report that shows some abnormalities? Going through life rudderless? Sure we have all been there at one time or another. Let me throw in a different wrinkle. You are in the situation but you KNOW you are there because its part of your spiritual/ faith journey.
I have been there. In Seminary, with very little income, no job offers despite the endless applying for anything that pays, BUT on the course that God has set for me. Sure the circumstances where less than ideal, but in many ways I still long for those times. Those were times where my faith was stretched. At times it may have felt flimsy, but in the end became even stronger. The times in worship on Sundays as I came knowing that God moved in my life that week… makes times of worship even more meaningful and not a routine. In those years I came to know (really know) a God that deeply cared about my needs and was not a distant absent God.
In the New International Version it says “consider it pure joy”. While I am sure many of us disagree that trials and times of hardship are not to be recieved joyfully. The Message version puts it a differently. It is a gift. Times of hardships are a gift. And as we open that gift we become more aware that we are not alone, that there is a God that cares and loves us. It is in these times of trouble we gain a deeper sense of faith and knowledge that the Creator of the Universe loves us intimately.
Thrown into the Deep End 