Look For The Joy

Be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

1 Peter 1:6-7

A PASSAGE IN one of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia novels, The Horse and His Boy, pictures the lion Aslan, who represents Jesus in the stories, and the boy riding through the night.

On the way to his destination, the boy has seen many trials, each one strangely accompanied by chasing and growling lions. The voice of Aslan reveals to the boy that each of those lions has been Aslan himself, giving him courage to ride harder or to escape dangerous forces, and he even appeared as a cat that slumbered next to him on a cold night. The boy is amazed to realize that God has been there through his every trial.

You may wonder why trials have come into your life. Maybe it’s a relationship problem such as betrayal or divorce. Maybe you’ve lost a job you loved. Maybe it’s sickness or the loss of a loved one. It could be anything and everything, from an expensive car accident to almost dying under a surgeon’s knife.

What God reveals here is that all these trials have a purpose in your life: to build and purify your faith. He lets you know plainly that one day your faith will receive “praise and glory and honor” when you are rewarded for your consistent commitment.