Dear Friends,

M. Scott Peck begins his book “The Road Less Traveled” with these words: “Life is difficult!” If you are in one of those difficult patches, today’s devotional should encourage you. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

• James 1:2-4

  James 1:2-4   English Standard Version (ESV)
  Testing of Your Faith
  2 Count it all joy, my brothers,[a] when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

James 1:2-4

“‘Look at this flute; it was a piece of wood; what has made it a flute? The rifts, the holes in it.’ What life is there through which affliction does not make some rift? All went well till then; but through that rift in the life came thought and feeling. ‘So,’ said the preacher, ‘I listened to a flute one day, complaining that it was spoiled by having a number of holes bored in it. ‘Once,’ it said, ‘I was a piece of wood very beautiful to look upon; now I am spoiled by all these rifts and holes;’ and it said all this mournfully and musically. ‘O thou foolish flute,’ I said, ‘without these rifts and holes thou wouldst only be a mere stick, a bit of mere hard, black ebony, soon to be thrown away. These rifts and holes have been the making of thee; they have made thee into a flute; they are thy life, thy character, thy music and melody, and thou will not now be cast aside with contempt, but touched by even the fingers of future generations.”

[Sunday at Home in Gray & Adams Bible Commentary I edited by James C. Gray and George M. Adams, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, n.d.), p. 885]