Crown of Life Promised

The story is told of a blind girl of about ten who often walked through the English town of Bedford in the 1660s, carrying a jug of soup to the county jail. Her father was a prisoner there, and he would stay for twelve years.

Her father was John Bunyan, and he could have walked out almost any time. The condition was always the same, and it sounded small: stop preaching. He said he would rather stay in prison until the moss grew on his eyebrows than agree to that. What nearly broke him was the separation from his family. He wrote that parting from his wife and children felt like pulling the flesh from his bones, and that his blind daughter Mary lay nearer his heart than anything else he had. He did not act like a hero about it. He was in pieces, and he stayed anyway.

That is closer to what James describes than most of what we say about endurance. Look at where James puts the blessing: "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation." The verb is in the present tense. The man is still in the trial, and nothing has been handed to him yet. The word "temptation" here is the wider word for trial. It covers the pressure of a hard situation as much as the pull toward sin. When the crown does come, it is "the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised." That puts the whole weight on the One who made the promise. And He has promised it "to them that love him," so you do not have to be strong to receive it.

That shows the difference between endurance and stubbornness. Stubbornness runs on willpower, and willpower runs out. Love holds on because of Someone outside itself. That is why a person can be in pieces and still not let go, and it is why you can trust the Lord who promised the crown to keep His word to everyone who loves Him.

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