| Ecclesiastes 7:9 – “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” |
June 1st is the unofficial beginning of summer.
While the sun’s schedule is still three weeks away, school is out and people think of summer.
Days are longer and soon; they will be so much hotter.
Someone has compared a man’s life to four seasons. There is a season of preparation, a season of planting, and a season of reaping.
But the summer of our lives is the time for enduring.
When the thermometer bursts through the century mark for days at a time.
When grass keeps growing and our desire to keep it diminishes.
The best we can do is wait it out and hope for the first cool front to arrive.
We all have that season, the times when life is hard and difficult.
Someone has written: Lincoln’s life was defined by enduring and transcending great difficulty. Growing up in rural poverty, losing his mother while he was still a child, educating himself, teaching himself the law, losing the woman he loved as a young man, practicing law in a small country town, experiencing multiple defeats at the ballot box as he made his way through politics, and, of course, the bouts of depression, which at the time were not understood or appreciated as a medical condition. All of these were impediments that Lincoln reduced with a kind of prodding, gracious ambition, and smiling, tender endurance.
Think about what would have been lost if he had decided it wasn’t worth it. How would history have changed? How would our lives, if they even existed would have? Instead, when he came into the summer of his life, he stayed with it, dealt with the heat laid on his shoulders.
Paul knew that the glories God prepares occur only when we live through the trials of life.
He told the Romans: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3–4)
The way to the other side is through.
We go through difficulties, some are part of life, and some may be our own making. Faith gets tested and patience is demanded. It’s never pleasant but to see beyond to a different season makes it easier to live through the summers of life.
So, remember in this summer season that we must endure it to get to fall. And that is true of life. Endure the difficulties because better days are coming.
–Robert G. Taylor
robertgtaylor.com
