Perseverance
At Christmas time, our homes are full of sparkling tinsel and lights, the music playing all around us is upbeat and joyful, and we wish each other good things- peace, joy and hope. But we know that January life requires more than a sprinkle of fairy dust and a naive wish that all will be OK. We only have to read the news to remember that we live in difficult and challenging times. As we look around at the communities we live in, and even to our own families, it is perhaps not a surprise that international relations reflect the same distrust, posturing, greed and violence that is simply a part of being human. To live well in this broken world, and to be people who can bring healing to it, we need to learn how to not let the challenges defeat us but to find resilience and strength of character.
Paul writes about where this character is birthed:
We boast in the hope of the glory of God.
Not only so, but we glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;
perseverance, character;
and character, hope.
Romans 5: 2-4
Paul is realistic about the Christian life- he knows that trusting Christ does not mean our problems disappear. He writes of the inevitability of suffering- sometimes outright persecution because of the values we have chosen to live by, and sometimes pain and disappointment because the world we live in is full of human beings just like us, who get things wrong more often than they get things right.
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in the hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Romans 8: 20-22
To live well in hard times requires perseverance- a determined holding on to the hope that God promises us.
May our suffering not be in vain, but produce that perseverance, so that by learning perseverance we develop character.
And by becoming men and women of character, we ourselves are the hope that this world so desperately needs.
Paul writes about where this character is birthed:
We boast in the hope of the glory of God.
Not only so, but we glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;
perseverance, character;
and character, hope.
Romans 5: 2-4
Paul is realistic about the Christian life- he knows that trusting Christ does not mean our problems disappear. He writes of the inevitability of suffering- sometimes outright persecution because of the values we have chosen to live by, and sometimes pain and disappointment because the world we live in is full of human beings just like us, who get things wrong more often than they get things right.
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in the hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Romans 8: 20-22
To live well in hard times requires perseverance- a determined holding on to the hope that God promises us.
May our suffering not be in vain, but produce that perseverance, so that by learning perseverance we develop character.
And by becoming men and women of character, we ourselves are the hope that this world so desperately needs.
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