Reflection on James 4:8–10

To Bear the Cross is to Wear the Crown

The most meaningful lessons in life cannot be learned from a textbook. All the libraries in the world could never teach someone what it truly is to suffer. Those lessons only come through lived experience. And even though we’d do almost anything to avoid discomfort, anything worth having is worth the pain of attaining it. Becoming Christlike is no exception. There is no sanctification without suffering.

James 4:8-10 paints a picture of grief and suffering that feels foreign to us. Instead of encouraging us to push past pain, James tells us to enter it: draw near to God, cleanse our hands, purify our hearts, mourn, weep, be brought low. According to James, suffering isn’t meaningless. It pulls back the curtain on our divided hearts. It exposes what needs purifying. It humbles us so deeply that the only place left to look is up. In this Scripture, grief is the very place where God invites us to draw near.

Christians and non-Christians alike wrestle with the same question: If God is good, why does He allow suffering? Why doesn’t He give us our heart’s desires and shield us from anything that wounds? But that is not the God of the Bible. And honestly, it’s not a god I’d want to serve. My God is a God of paradoxes. Maybe a life of endless blessing is its own kind of idol. Maybe, “the greatest injury is in the having, and the greatest good is the taking away.”  It’s in the wanting… the loneliness… the emptiness… that we cry out to God. He humbles us, and in that humbling, we draw near to Him.

I love spring when everything is blooming and bursting with green. I love the warmth and long days of summer. I love the golden leaves and crisp air of fall. But winter? I’d skip it every year if I could. Twenty-nine years in Colorado hasn’t softened me to the brown grass, freezing winds, dangerous roads, or the painful memories that February brings. I don’t love the winter of the soul, either. It’s dark, disorienting, and full of questions I’ll never have answers to this side of eternity. I wish I didn’t know what a dark night of the soul feels like, but I do.

And yet there is one comfort: the same Lord who authors spring, summer, and fall also authors winter, both in the world and in my heart. Spurgeon said, “He sends the sharp blasts of adversity to nip the buds of expectation. He scatters the frost like ashes over the once verdant meadows of our joy. He does it all. He is the great Winter King.” All of our afflictions come by wise design. The dark night empties us. It shows us the depth of our need. It forces us to face the truth that we are not enough on our own. In our mourning, God is humbling us, and like Christ, we learn obedience through suffering. Scripture promises that this suffering is doing a work. Peter says it reveals the genuineness of our faith and produces endurance and patience. It is not pointless. It is not wasted.

As I look at my own story, I do see the Lord purifying my heart through suffering, slowly, and often painfully, but faithfully. He has used grief to peel back layers I didn’t even know were there, to reveal where I’ve trusted in myself, and to teach me dependence on Him in ways I would never have learned in seasons of ease.

The question of how I might engage the Lord more deeply in my own grief is one I’m still living into. It has been in the lamenting, the mourning, the searching of Scriptures and the praying that I have found God to be close to my own broken heart. Healing from grief is a lifelong process, but I am finding that He truly does give us joy in our mourning and peace amidst the pain. If I can meet Him honestly in my own suffering, I will be better equipped to sit with those who suffer. Through my own experiences, healing will never happen with quick fixes and easy answers, but with compassion formed in the furnace.

So, with the Puritans of old, let me learn by paradox: “that the way down is the way up, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision.” And may God give me the wisdom and tenderness to teach others the same and to help them trust His mysterious work even when they cannot see His hand.

References

Bennett, A. (Ed.). (1975). The valley of vision. The Banner of Truth Trust.

Spurgeon, C. (1980). Morning & evening: Complete and unabridged (Zondervan large print ed ed.). Zondervan.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, 2001, James 4:8-10