Joy in Sorrow

The following is an excerpt from my book, Faith Beyond Belief: Understanding True Faith from the Book of James (available on Nook and Kindle).


From Chapter 1: Faith that is Steadfast

The whole point of this discussion [about Job’s pain] is to help us understand what James means when he tells us to consider it pure joy when we face trials of many kinds. There is simply nothing at all joyful about them. The absolute hardest, most hypocritical thing I could possibly tell you is that you need to be happy because of your trialsbecause that’s what the Bible says. How in the world are we expected to be happy about this level of pain? Do you think that Job was happy about what happened to him?

I do not believe that James here is telling us that we are to be happy about the pain and suffering that we go through. It would be cruel to expect us not to be sorrowful about the painful things in our lives… AND… more importantly, it would be unbiblical… {section omitted}

So we remain in a conundrum. If sorrow and mourning are expected and OK, then what exactly is James trying to say? What does it mean to “consider it pure joy”? Going back to the definition of joy, I think we must lean on the understanding of joy not in the emotional sense – although it is an emotion - but in the sense of being grateful or thankful. God may eventually give us the grace and mercy of allowing us to eventually be truly emotionally happy about the things that have happened to us, but in the moment, we are truly sorrowful and grieved. We will not feel happy about out trials, but we can choose to be grateful. We may not be able to choose to be happy, but even in our sorrow we can choose to be grateful and thankful. I would argue that even when we absolutely do not understand why these things are happening to us, we can choose to thank God for them. We can choose to be grateful for them even in our sorrow. We’ve already shown that Job was in great pain, was sorrowful, and was even having something of a spiritual crisis, but look at Job’s deliberate response to his circumstances.

Job 1:21 And he said, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”
Job 1:22 In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.

Job 2:10 (In response to his wife) But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Is it possible for us to make a conscious choice to praise God in the storm - to choose to be grateful even in sorrow? That is what James is asking us do.