I went to a women’s group at my church, and it felt good to be with the women I had grown to love last year while I was apart of it. Familiar faces and awkward ‘Get to know eachother’ games…it’s all apart of the experience. 🙂
Anyhoo, I wanted to write quickly about something we talked about. In the beginning of the book of James, he challenges us to consider it pure joy to go through trials of many kinds. James is my favorite book and has been for my whole life. I have read that before but didn’t know how to make it applicable to my life today. While it sounds simple, it’s hard to live out!
We talked about when we go through hard trials/times/seasons we have many choices. To be angry is a popular choice, and so is chosing to close down to the world around you. However, James tells us that a choice we should be making is JOY. We should choose to be joyful in the hard seasons of our lives to develop the character necessary to show Gods love to others.
There is always the other side of the coin and one could say that someone could choose joy too much and be disillusioned to the realities surrounding them. There are always two sides to everything and keeping it all in tension is the struggle called humanity…yes we/I will be closer to one side and the other another day, but what I think is most important is choosing to make the choice to take JOY and trudge through whatever season God has you/me in.
