Pure Joy?

Ok kids, everyone turn in your Bibles to the book of James (it's toward the back of the New Testement) , James chapter 1 to be specific. Verse 2 says “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” This passage goes on to talk about how trials build perseverance which eventually leads to a more perfect, or mature, faith in God. While I do not believe God sends bad things into our lives, I do believe he uses these things to teach us, strengthen us, and to make us better Christians. So I guess I’m wondering what I’m supposed to be learning from this past six weeks that I have gone through.

Bear with me here. I’m not complaining, just pondering what I should take from all this.

First I break my thumb forcing me to wear a brace/cast thing for the past six weeks. It is getting much better, and the injury could have been exponentially worse than it was. I have an appointment tomorrow. I'm hoping he tells me I can stop wearing the brace. But it was just step one.

A couple weeks ago the transmission on my still relatively new car breaks and has to be overhauled. I know nothing about cars. I felt like the guy in the computer commercial saying ‘so the security is in the blinky thing?’ when it was explained to me. Now, I was spared having to shell out more than $4,000 for this repair because it was still under warranty, by all of 400 miles. Ok, so this clearly could have been far worse than it was.

This morning I wake up to hear my sump pump doing and impersonation of Old Faithful. It was spewing water up instead of pumping it out. After the panic subsided, and my Dad came over to help, We figured out the problem. A check valve had broken and was pushing the rain water back into the house rather than outside. The obvious water pressure broke most of the pvc joints in the sump pump contraption. There are two things in home repair that freak me out; plumbing and electricity. This involved both. It took all morning but we got the valve replaced and the all the pipes back together and in working order. Another good thing is there was minimal water damage. Yet again, even though it freaked me out pretty good, it could have been a whole lot worse.

Finally, over the past couple months I’ve been seeing one of my doctors to resolve a recurring problem. A few weeks ago he comes back to tell me that I have stones in my bladder again, and he wants to go in to remove them before they get to big or cause any more problems. I am going in this Thursday for that. I’m not overly worried or nervous about this. But it will render me useless for a few days.

Hmmmm, so in reflecting on this as I write maybe my ‘pure joy’ is in the realization that even though bad stuff and inconvenient stuff happens it could always be worse. In spite of these kinds of crazy things in my life, God is still clearly very good to me. I’ve got good friends, I’ve got a good family (well mostly), I’ve got a good job, and I’ve got this blogger thing to help me reflect on stuff. Who could ask for any more, right?