Trials

Message in a Sundial

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You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. Isaiah 26:3 NIV

“Every joy or trial, falleth from above: Traced upon our dial, by the sun of love.” When I sing those lines from, Like a River Glorious, I often picture the old sundial that sat at the end of my Great-grandmother’s garden. I remember that garden distinctly because I spent so many hours weeding it! My great-grandmother is now no longer here to see her garden, but the lessons about how the sundial tells time remind me of this hymn. The shadows of the trials as well as the joys that ebb and flow each day, tell the story of the time we are at in our lives. As believers in our Lord Jesus, we know that we belong to Him, we are bought with a price, and nothing touches our lives that He has not allowed. Though some days are bitter, and filled with trials, Jesus leads us through and the shadow that they cast on our hearts, tell us also that the sun of His love is shining. He is still in control, no matter what is happening. He knows the depth of our difficulties as well as the height of our joys. Do not despair, because at the end of the day, we can find as He promised, His perfect peace and rest!

Drip by Drip and Drop by Drop

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Love settles swiftly in the heart
Where Christ Jesus comes to reign
While Joy comes bursting like a flood
And Peace begins its reign

But patience keeps me through the night
As she lags behind the rest
And holds my heart through fire and flood
For the moment God knows best

Then drip by drip and drop by drop
When the fiercest storm wind blows
She fills my cup with living hope 
In Jesus overflows


Drip by Drip and Drop by Drop
By Peter Caligiuri
Copyright © 2026
All rights reserved

P.S. This poem written while I am learning patience is dedicated to my former pastor, Dr. Joliam Sampaio. As he and his wife Claudia have given their lives in ministry, and missions, they have modeled patience. Through suffering and even slander, they have maintained both the joy and the meekness of Jesus.

https://www.supplyingseeds.com/

Joy is a Choice

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Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. James 1:2-3 NIV

Who doesn’t want joy? From a thousand book titles to the theme of a million Christmas cards, the word joy beckons us towards this seemingly elusive feeling. But the Bible’s concept of joy, is not a feeling that comes and goes in our lives, but a command to embrace just as we embrace our children, on both their good days and bad. But the Bible doesn’t ask us to blindly jump up and down when things go awry. Today’s verse gives us tells us that we can rejoice because trial teach us perseverance. I am reminded of when, as a teenager, I worked in a factory that producing copper tubing. When the tubing first arrived, it came in 5-inch diameter, thick-walled tubes, each one being almost 20 feet in length. Our job was to take those rough tubes and extrude them into much smaller precisely manufactured pieces. But first, the copper had to be annealed. Annealing is a process of rapidly heating the copper in a furnace and then immersing it in cold water. Without annealing, the copper remained hard and impossible for us to work with. But once the annealing was completed, the tubes were softened, so we could they could be extruded into the various sizes our customers needed.

Trials are what God uses to anneal our character. Before facing trials, most of us are too overconfident and proud of our own abilities for God to use us to serve others. But I have found that He is an expert at using circumstances to heat up my world, and then just as things seem unbearably hot, He turns things around plunges me into cold water. When the shock of these changes wears off and I turn to God for help, I discover that though my situation has not altered, somehow, miraculously, God has changed my own heart. The desires, dreams and goals I held so tightly to earlier now have been replaced by His and a peace, greater than I can understand. Then I realize that God has got me right where I belong, and a joy, that no one can take away settles in my soul.