Perseverance:
Psalm 66:10-12
For you, O God,
have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.
You brought us
into the net; you laid a
crushing burden on our backs;
you let men ride
over our heads; we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to
a place of abundance.
What it means to persevere.
Perseverance: Steadfastness in doing something despite
difficulty or delay in achieving success.
Through this year the word “perseverance” has taken
on a deeper meaning for me. It is not a word that gives me a warm and fuzzy
feeling. As I faced a depletion of strength over the months leading up to
Christmas there were many times that I just wanted to give up. I lamented to my
husband that I truly wished that God had called me to eat chocolate and watch
Downton Abbey on Netflix full time!
When we face emotional turmoil because of
broken relationships, badly behaved parishioners, children who decide to take a
break from God, physical challenges that bring on chronic pain,
_____________________________ ( You fill in the blank), perseverance takes on a
dark and sinister façade. When I say the word perseverance out loud I hear the
root of the word, “severe”, meaning: intense, very harsh.
So why is it that God tells us to carry on?
To keep going even when the load placed on our backs feels like it will crush
us? These verses in Psalm 66 actually state that God brings us into a net, that
God is testing us and trying us like silver in a purification process. My first
and most honest reaction to this realization is “thanks, but no thanks, God, I
am just fine and I take a pass”. I don’t like conflict and I don’t like
discomfort. I am not on the lookout for hard challenges; I like happy events
that end by eating cake! In fact, as I write this my daughter is spending two
nights in the wilderness, sleeping in a hut made of snow and I cannot even wrap
my head around why someone would do this on purpose! Give me a warm bed, cozy
jammies, a cup of chamomile tea and the remote!
The reality is that life happens and it is
hard, circumstances land in our lap that take our breath away and giving up is my
default mode, but the problem with surrendering in defeat is that it does not bring
about the abundance talked about in this passage. Sure, in the moment I might
have lots of chocolates and two whole seasons of “Downton Abbey” to watch, but
the blessing of God’s abundance would be lost.
When the writer talks about a place of
abundance, the word in the Hebrew is revayah,
which means saturation. In other words, a place where I will have so much that
I won’t be able to absorb any more.
In the middle of my flood and fire, and the
crushing burden that makes me feel like, in the words of William Wordsworth, “[1]the world is too much with us, late and
soon” I hang on with hope that I will come to a place of a saturation for
my soul by the One who Himself persevered through death to bring me to the
place of abundance. I have discovered like the author of Psalm 66 that God’s
very presence is that place.
This psalm ends with great hope for all of
us.
“Blessed
be God, because he has
not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!”
Good encouragement here! I'm with you. I'd take Downton Abbey and chocolate over difficulty any day. But when we consider the end result, the difficulty is so much more productive and rewarding in the long run.
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