When all kinds of
trials and temptations crowd into your lives my brothers, don’t resent them as
intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realise that they come to test your
faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on
until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you have become men
of mature character with the right sort of independence. James 1:2-4 (J. B. Phillips)
This right
sort of independence is freedom from untruth. Freedom from fear, anxiety,
worry. These trials and temptations are to be welcomed into our lives time and
time again so that we can once again experience God’s love and power and
sufficiency.
Tiptoeing
around the stagnant waters of a safe life is continuing in slavery, the bondage
of the lie that it is up to me and my strength, my wit and my charm. And might
as well play it safe. These are certainly not the still waters where He
promises to lead me. Rather it is my little roily self breaking away from the
Good Shepherd to find my very own maybe manageable mud puddle.
I first
memorized James in Barrio Nuestra Esfuerza, San Jose de Ocoa, Republica
Dominicana. Ironically. And life there was all about endurance. The hitch up
your britches and quit cha bellyachin’ lots of people have it a lot worse sort
of endurance. Not so much The consider it pure joy sort of endurance that James
is talking about.
I always thought that endurance meant tenacity, doggedness, grit sorts of things. But Merriam-Webster’s first alphabetical
order synonym is abidance. Which I
didn’t even know was a word. Abide in Me.
And I just
about let the Our Strength sort of endurance ruin my trip to New York City. I
was wound up pretty tight. Maybe not so much fun to be around. But that ol’
Uncle Jim kept me straight. And as we trundled pretty much all of his earthly
possessions including two canes and a slightly broken walker and a bag of
Depends through crowded full of late flights and weary attendant airports he
kept marveling, “God is so good to me,” each time as if it were a brand new
discovery.
A discovery
of a new country, a new vista, a new way of seeing life. Perfect and complete.
Lacking in nothing. Because He and only He is sufficient.
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