Being Poor Doesn't Necessarily Make You Thrifty

I've attended three funerals in the past month, each one for an octogenarian.  In every service, it was mentioned that the departed had endured the Great Depression as a child. The impact on these people had been obvious: they had become thrifty, or generous, or "tough".  For these folks, whom I knew, it was absolutely the truth.  Tough times had built character.

I'll betcha, though, that there were folks who went through the Depression that turned out bitter, mean and tight-fisted.

The point is that suffering doesn't always make us sweet any more than being poor makes us thrifty.

Making the leap to Christian application, believers should be careful about becoming bitter during times of trial.  If we don't receive trials in the proper way, or learn in the midst of them how good they can actually be, we run the risk of missing blessings and weakening our faith and becoming morbidly depressed!  Trials, as Jesus' brother James tells us, are to be counted as joy (weird, huh!), because of what they produce in us, and because by them we as believers are made complete (pardon another set of parentheses, but WOW!).

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1:2-4


George Mattheson, who in spite of going blind when he was 20, insisted on following the Lord's call into ministry.  He suffered in a very unique way, no doubt, and later penned these words in his hymn "O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go":

"O Joy that seekest me through the pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

and feel the promise is not in vain..."