Perseverance
In a life often filled with hardships, struggles and challenges, we often find ourselves on the edge of faith. Not only faith in God, but faith in government, faith in our employer, faith in humanity and sometimes faith in ourselves. To get through these times and find ourselves back on stable footing, I have had to learn persistence. One definition of persistence is “continuing in obstacles tennaciously”.
When I read that definition it reminded me of one of my pets as a young teenager. Brownie was a pit bull. Now this was back before pit-bulls had the reputation of vicously attacking kids. We got Brownie as a puppy and she grew up with my brothers, sister and I. She was a loyal protector, no one would even get out of their care when they came to our house because she stood gaurd and subtlely said – “Dont even try it”. As ferocious as she looked, she was gentle to our family as can be. We would often wrestle with Brownie and she loved to be chase and be chased. Part of the fun when we wrestled would be she would get on top of us and “bite our arm”. Her bite was never hard enough to break the skin but I could stand up and literally swing her around and she would not let go. It must have been a funny sight to see a boy swinging a bull dog around on his arm. I was always amazed at how she hung as we would see how fast we could swing her. That in my opinion is persistance – hanging on and not letting go, no matter how fast the world was swinging by.
That same concept is what I think James meant in James 1:2-4, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” When we look at perserance as something that is changing us, and if we allow, changes us in a positive way, I think we can find strength in that.
“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other”.
