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.
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 The desires, dreams and goals I held so tightly to earlier now have been replaced by His and a peace, greater than I can understand.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.
He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him. Psalm 30:3 NIV
Once the old strings are unwound and removed from my guitar, my next step is to put the new ones in their place. One by one, they need to be seated into the saddle and their pegs pressed firmly into place, or they will pop out as they are tensioned. Then each string must be fished through the end of the tuning peg and properly wrapped. This tedious process reminds me of our first wobbly steps as a baby. We are not yet confident of our footing, nor sure of our balance, so our moms and dads are vital to gently helping us to try and try again. Just like our parents, God is also gentle with our fearful first steps of faith on new paths that He puts us on. We may not yet understand where He is leading, but we need to learn to trust Him as He slowly tensions our new strings in their places.
When after a great deal of twisting and turning the guitar strings begins to sound their proper notes, my job is still not done. First, those strings must be played a bit and then given one more final tuning. In that same way, God’s discipline isn’t over when we start out on a new commitment. As the sign I once saw outside a church said, “Thanks for inviting me to the wedding. Don’t forget to invite me the marriage.” – Jesus
Thank God that He only asks us to take one step at a time and He is patient when after a few faltering steps we stumble. He knows that we are not ready to run, just as my guitar with its latest set of strings is not prepared for a concert. Instead, that is when God draws us near, listens closely to our tone, and does some more fine tuning, till we are playing the notes He has in mind. Is God changing the strings in your life today? Have some old and dear things been broken, taken out of their places, or lost? As the words of the old hymn “He Keeps Me Singing” tell us: Jesus sweeps across the broken strings of our life to awaken a new song. Don’t give up or give in to doubt or depression, God is not through, He is just preparing you for a new set of strings and a new melody that He has chosen for you to play!
"All my life was wrecked by sin and strife Discord filled my heart with pain Jesus swept across the broken strings Stirred the slumbering chords again." He Keeps Me Singing Luther Bridges 1910
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