Trial

Often the idea of being tested comes with a negative connotation. We’re not talking about entering the Olympics Games to test our well-trained bodies and mental resilience against other athletes. Instead, we’re referring to the pain and suffering we may experience when our world is shaken.

In a way, we are very much like those Olympic athletes; we have the capacity to build our spiritual and mental fitness by practising acceptance, surrender, trust and dependency on God. There are many daily opportunities for us to train - someone cuts you off in traffic, your TV goes out right before the State of Origin, students keep acting up in class, it's Friday night and your kids don’t want to go to bed. All great spiritual workouts are good preparation for the many life experiences we cannot control or change. 

Some trials are far more difficult and painful. In these moments, we might wonder about Jesus being led into the desert and tested for 40 days. How could He have endured that trial without a deep trust and connection with God? And how can we grow in our trust and connection with God? Perhaps Jesus endured the desert by being sustained and loved by his Father through prayer. We too can build up our spiritual endurance when we engage in the same daily practice of prayer. 

We don’t often consider the other trials Jesus encountered. The times he continued to teach and heal people despite being hungry, mentally drained and exhausted. The times he travelled long distances on dirt roads without a home to sleep in. Or the times people shunned and rejected him, and even tried to stone or throw him off a cliff! 

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr says that, 'after the age of thirty, we have more to learn from our failures than we do from our successes'. Trials, although painful and heartbreaking, have the capacity to grow and expand our hearts. They teach us how to care for and give to others. Perhaps in the end, Jesus was able to fully give of himself and acquiesce to his greatest trial because he was formed by a lifetime of smaller trials while growing in acceptance, surrender, trust and dependence on God. 

At times people may try to comfort us by saying that God will not give us more than we can handle. Perhaps the real comfort is in knowing that we have a God who is in the thick and worst of it with us. A God that sustains us with peace. A God who gives us the Holy Spirit. A God who can transform all things for good; including our trials. A God who understands, even when we don’t. 

Through our trials, let us continue to surrender, trust and depend on the God who loves us without fail.