So, as part of our normal weekly Bible Study routine, my best friend and I are trying to synchronize our daily Bible Readings. Me? I've been decidedly lax on this front, so I told him I'd follow his lead. At last night's Bible Study, we decided, at random, to start at James for now, reading a chapter a day. We agreed to meet up online at night, to basically make sure we'd both read it. I did not intend to really write anything, but just jot down a few notes to help me remember what I'd thought. Here's what I ended up writing.
---------------------------------------------------------
Thought One
How hard is it to face trials and suffering with PURE JOY????? How often do we actually do that? The bottom line is, trials suck. And it's not until afterward that we look back and can see the journey or maybe even glimpse the reasonings for the trial that we find, not joy, but satisfaction in knowing that we persevered. But, this passage is saying it should be otherwise!! We should persevere, knowing, without a doubt, that God will bring us through, and find joy (yes, JOY!) that this trial is happening to us "...so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (vs. 4) Looking at this verse, it tells me that we are going through a trial because we lack something. And if we persevere through the suffering with an eye towards finding what we should be learning from it, we just might find that something we were lacking. But, we have to take ourselves out of the little pity-party we normally love reveling in, and realize it's not about our suffering, but about how these trials will make us a more complete person in God's eyes.
Thought Two
"Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry." (vs. 19) Again, something of a rarity these days. It is so easy to be angry in situations we don't understand completely. And so, we shoot of our mouths with so-called righteous anger, never taking the time to listen to the other's viewpoint - to try and put ourselves in their shoes, so to speak. How much better would this world be if we stopped to think about any situation from someone else's position, instead of always leaping to our own, often completely wrong, conclusions? And this does not just apply to being angry... whenever we make judgments about someone, have you thought about why they act the way they do? I know I am exceptionally guilty of judging people's character, even though I try so hard not to. Something to definitely be more conscious about.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
So, there it is. This was only the first day of reading, so whether or not I end up writing something for each day remains to be seen. Hope anyone who reads this enjoys it, and maybe finds it a bit eye-opening, as I did.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment