My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. (James 1:2-4)
Do you enjoy trials? In my work as a social worker, having been in court trials more times than I can care to count, I can say almost emphatically, no. There is a defense side, a prosecuting side, and a judge. You have witnesses, you have the defendant. And you have rules of engagement. I know they aren’t called that, but trials are battles to win over the jury or the judge and get him to agree to whichever side we are on. It’s adversarial and it’s uncomfortable and it’s stressful.
You may think that is not what is going on here, but I beg to differ. Anytime that we are beset by troubles, we are being watched and cheered on by the courts of heaven to make the right decision or harassed by His opposition, trying to bring us down. And the trials can hurt. From illnesses to divorce, from accidents to death, all of them are a trial of our faith. How will we respond to the pain in our lives?
James says, count it all joy when faced with trials. Don’t give up, don’t give in, don’t despair, take a deep breath, commit it to God, and keep going.
As a therapist, I work with people every day who are totally overwhelmed by life. Too much happened faster than they can process it. I met a woman a couple of years ago who came in at the urging of her husband. She had lost her mother, her son, her job, her health, and she hadn’t collapsed. He was a nervous wreck, and she didn’t seem to worry about any of it. He thought either she had a secret stash of drugs, or she must be crazy; whatever, he feared she would go postal. He was taking it a lot worse than she was; he could not believe she hadn’t already snapped.
After talking to her, I asked her permission and called him into the session, and we explained to him something he didn’t understand.
She was a born-again Christian. Her reading of what was happening in just the past few months was totally different than his. Yes, they were blows, they were crises, they were horrible, but she knew God would see her through it. Her husband had no such hope. When something bad happened, he cried out and complained. She reframed it. She said, “Lord, I don’t know why you took my son so soon; but I know he loved you and I’ll see him again someday. Thank you for your care. Keep him for me and come back soon.” And when her mother died, she and her father knew that Mom was Christian and they would meet again. And when this dear lady was diagnosed with malignant brain cancer, she thanked God for the doctors and the care she was getting, and she thanked Him that she would soon be at His side.
Can you see the difference in attitude? She didn’t try to carry the problems herself. She let the problems go to her Lord, and she just went day to day, taking care of herself as long as she could, and her family and the tasks that were in front of her that she could do. She smiled through her pain because she knew it was a temporary thing, it would pass. She looked forward to being reunited with her mom and son, walking the streets of gold, climbing the tree of life, and picking fruit. She had a future. Her husband did not see it because he didn’t have it. Once he got it, once he accepted Christ, he was able to change his perspective and accept his wife’s eventual death.
To explain a term I just used, in counseling, one of the techniques we use is reframing. It means to look at the facts, decide if we can do anything about them, and then change the way we react to them. To change “Oh, no, now what!” to “Oh, now what am I going to learn from this and about how long is it going to take to get to a better place?” In other words, to allow ourselves to have hope. We look past the present pain to the time when it’s going to be over.
When James tells us here to count it as joy, he’s not expecting superhuman feats of heroism, he’s telling us to change our attitude toward whatever the problem might be. Your attitude will determine how happy you are in this life. It’s a conscious choice to be patient, to be ready for His leading in and out of the problem, and to learn a lesson from it so we don’t repeat it.
Life never comes at us in nicely organized little spurts. It crashes into us like ocean waves, and we tumble and we swallow dirty water and we spit it out. Fish get in our bathing suits and seaweed gets tangled in our hair; we can hardly catch our breaths. Yet, wait until the wave stills and walk out on the beach, a bit worse for wear but having learned not to go so close to the water. Trials come, they singe our hearts and mark our souls, but there is one who can take care of those things. We wait until the quarantine is over, we wait until the disease is gone, the pain from someone we love going away, and we stand up and say, what’s next? That kind of living makes a person strong; James says perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
We have been tried, tested, and come out on the winning side of court. We will have studied to become approved of God. And that is the best outcome of all.