Crown of Life Promised

A blind girl of about ten walks the same route through Bedford most days carrying a jug of soup to the county gaol, where her father is serving what turns into twelve years.

John Bunyan could have walked out almost any time. The condition was always the same and it was always small: stop preaching. He said he would stay until the moss grew on his eyebrows rather than give it, and the thing that nearly broke him was not the cell. He wrote that parting from his family was like the pulling of flesh from bones, and that Mary, the blind one, lay nearest his heart. He was not heroic about it. He was in pieces about it and stayed anyway.

Which is closer to what James is describing than most of the language people use about endurance. Notice where he puts the blessing. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, present tense, while he is still in it and before anything has been handed over. The word for temptation here is the wider one, trial, the pressure of a situation as much as the pull of a sin. And when the crown does come it comes from the Lord hath promised, which puts the whole weight on the promiser, and it is promised to them that love him. Not to them that are strong.

That is the difference between endurance and stubbornness, and it is the only reliable one. Stubbornness runs on willpower and willpower has a floor. Love holds on for a reason outside itself, which is why it can be in pieces and still not let go.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 304 is Why Sleepest Thou (Psalm 44:23).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna