Adversity

Adversity comes from so many different directions and in so many ways. Having felt the pain of the death of a young sister, the terminal illness of a spouse and his subsequent death, difficulties of unemployment and the financial worries associated with it, and just plain loneliness, I feel an empathy for those who suffer. While none of us can know exactly what another is experiencing, most of us know what pain is, and so many I know right now are experiencing great trials.

As I was editing away, I came across this passage from author David Roper, who offers great insight about adversity. He writes about the bristlecone pines, a type of tree that exists in the western United States. It's a tree that survives for many years (one is about five thousand years old) in high altitudes with little water in the face of strong winds. These are his comments:



Bristlecones know something we've forgotten: Hardship makes for
extraordinary strength and staying power.

We decry the parents who raised us or rail at present indignity and misery,
yet adversity is part of the good God has promised to do for us. Trouble, if it turns us to God, ceases to be evil. It becomes the best thing that could happen to us.

So we should pray, not for the relief of our affliction, but for the grace
to turn it into greater openness to God and to His will for us. That’s the
point of earthly life and the point of all our suffering.

Accepted as part of God’s will, difficulty delivers us from the necessities
that ordinary men and women cannot do without. It purifies us from our
earthly attachments and pride. It liberates us from ambition and the desire
for earthly prestige and power. It “digs in us a deeper place for God’s
grace to fill,” as a beleaguered friend of mine once said, and leaves us
wholly dependent upon God’s love alone. Thus we acquire extraordinary
strength and endurance that others never achieve.

That’s why Paul entreats us to rejoice in adversity, “knowing that
tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven
character . . .” (Romans 5:3, 4). We must dig deep in the hard times, with
unseen roots clinging “cramplike” to God. Thus we can be strong in calamity, at peace in the place where God has planted us. “I’ve not seen a
discontented tree,” John Muir said.