Joy That Knows What It Is Doing

James 1:2-4. James writes to believers scattered across the Roman world, many of them poor, some of them pushed out of their homes, and the first thing he says after hello is that they should consider their trials pure joy. It sounds almost unkind until you read the next line. He does not say trials are pleasant. He says the testing of faith produces perseverance, and perseverance, given time to finish its work, produces maturity.

The joy is not a feeling to manufacture. It is a judgment to make. James uses the language of accounting: reckon it, count it, put it in this column rather than that one. You can do that on a day when you feel nothing at all.

A Friday in July may hold a hard conversation, a bill, a diagnosis, a quiet dread about the fall. James asks you to look at it and say, honestly, this can make me steady. God is not wasting it. That is the reason for joy, and it holds whether or not the trial lifts.