Wendell Berry’s title character Hannah Coulter feared that the way she has talked about her considerable hardships have caused her and husband Nathan’s children not to want the difficult farming life they have known in Berry’s fictional Port William. Nathan told her “Don’t complain about the chance you had,” which puts everything in perspective – the good and the bad, the hard times and the times of ease, times of plenty and times of deprivation. Hannah realizes, “The chance you had is the life you’ve got…you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.’”[1]
Many families at Thanksgiving take turns naming something they are thankful for from the year now past. What are the odds that you would thank God for the hardest things you’ve experienced? We thank God for his mercies we experience in hardship but dare we thank God for hardship itself? Yet it seems thanking God for the hard things themselves is what we are to do. “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thess. 5:16-18, KJV). Let’s be clear – bad things are not good things. Even though God meant it for good, Joseph’s brothers still had evil intentions and did wicked things to him (Gen. 50:20). Hard things in themselves aren’t necessarily good. But it is what they do for us and in us which are our reason for thanks. For those who have put their faith in Christ, “tribulation” is the first link in a golden chain that ends in hope: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5, NIV). We are to “glory,” or “boast,” in our trials because they are the crucible in which faith is refined into priceless Spirit-authenticated hope. We don’t boast in our own courage or perseverance, but in the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ which reconciles us to God by faith alone in Christ alone (Rom. 5:1). It is boasting in nothing less than God himself whose most mighty and wonderful work was the wickedest work ever done by human hands (Acts 2:22-25).
Hard things in themselves aren’t necessarily good. But it is what they do for us and in us which are our reason for thanks.
Many observers of culture have noted that we live today in the midst of a “resiliency crisis,” a decline in ability to deal with hardship—ranging from normal day-to-day annoyances like getting an average grade on a quiz to the big things like job or relationship loss. “Snowflake generation” has been used to designate a certain age group, but the reality is that we live in a “snowflake culture” where one’s personal happiness is not just a personal goal, but everyone else’s problem. “Trauma” has gone from describing material, life-altering experiences to being an expression of identity. Impediments are perceived as personal assaults on one’s happiness. We as Christians are not immune to this outlook when we placate our children rather than let them struggle, when we ethically compromise to advance our professional lives, or when we eschew and abandon relationships which become a burden to us. Pastors are not immune either when they give in to the pressures of their people’s cultural or partisan expectations and scratch the “itch” of their people’s ears rather than bear their disapproval (2 Tim. 4:3-4).
This was not the way of our Savior “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12:2, ESV). In fact, he endured in order that we might endure, he suffered and died so that we might live (2 Cor. 5:15). But beyond that he redeemed suffering itself so that our trials become means of compelling us to depend upon God, to love this life less, and to make us into his likeness. Even though we are not compelled to suffer unnecessarily, the key to resilience is not avoiding trials, but seeing how Christ has transformed them just as he transformed the grave. The way to life in the present as well as eternal life isn’t in self-preservation, but in self-denial by following in the way of Christ (Mark 8:34-48).
Even though we are not compelled to suffer unnecessarily, the key to resilience is not avoiding trials, but seeing how Christ has transformed them just as he transformed the grave.Nearly two years ago, friend, RTS Orlando graduate, fellow church member, and lifelong classical Christian school educator Laura Grace Alexander told me, “The doctors said this time this is it.” I knew what she meant. Over the last year and a half, she had been fighting cancer—again. Since early adulthood “LG” had been beset with a series of cancer battles, each time coming through after the trials of treatment. This time she would not. She asked if I would preach her funeral, which would be soon. “Of course, I will, LG. Do you have a scripture in mind?” I answered. Her response: “It’s got to be Psalm 16, ‘the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places, indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.’” I did my best when the time came three months later. A real-life Hanna Coulter, LG understood perfectly that the life God gives us is not walking through a cafeteria line picking the menu we like, but it comes to us whole cloth because it is the way in which the good God who does good (Psalm 119:68) gives us his very self (Psalm 16:5, 11).
For the Christian, we are not to “boast” in our trials just to make the best of a bad situation any more than the cross was Jesus simply making lemonade out of lemons. Seeing our trials as the fiery forge of hope not only turns our mourning into dancing, it turns our wincing into boasting—boasting in the cross not just as the beginning of the Christian life, but as the path of life and boasting in the God who bring life out of death, hope out of sorrow. As we give thanks for our many blessings this Thanksgiving, let’s be sure to include the hard things.
[1] Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter: A Novel (Counterpoint, 2004), 113.
