We all face challenges, and we all experience pain and suffering, sometimes for an extended period of time. This suffering can take many forms, including physical illness, financial setbacks, and difficult relationships. When a trial persists with no end in sight, the original question “Why me?” may give way to other questions like “How much longer?” or even “Will this ever end?”
James wastes no time addressing this topic in his general epistle to the church. “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations,” he writes (James 1:2). The Greek word for “temptation”—peirasmos (πειρασμός)—can also be translated as “trial,” and most English translations use that word instead. Joseph Smith changed the word to “afflictions” in his revision of the Bible.
But then, trials and temptations may have more in common than we think. In both cases, we are being tested, to determine what we are capable of. The length of a test is itself an indicator of its difficulty, and when our trials outlast our perceived endurance, we may discover reserves of strength we didn’t know we had.
James continues, “The trying of your faith worketh patience” (James 1:3). So we are not only being tested. We’re being stretched. We’re being strengthened. It may not be comfortable at the time, but our afflictions are turning us into the people God wants us to become.
Then James adds something which Neal A. Maxwell called “a sigh of the soul:” “Let patience have her perfect work” (James 1:4; see “Patience,” Brigham Young University Devotional Address, 27 November 1979). In other words, “Don’t give up. It’s not over yet, but it will be. There is a reason you’re going through this, and when that purpose is accomplished, the trial will end. Let the trial do its job.”
As Mormon related the story of Alma and his people building a new city and beginning to “prosper exceedingly,” he added a soul-sigh of his own: “Nevertheless the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith.” But then he quickly assured us, “Whosoever putteth his trust in him the same shall be lifted up at the last day” (Mosiah 23:21-22). When is that last day? We don’t know, but we demonstrate and increase our patience and faith as we keep moving forward in spite of the difficulties, believing that the last day will come.
“Counting it all joy” may not mean feeling happy right now. It may mean “[looking] forward with an eye of faith” (Alma 5:15, Alma 32:40, Ether 12:19), believing that the current trial is an essential part of God’s ultimate plan for our happiness.
Today, I will let patience have her perfect work in me and in the people I love. I will trust that the trials and temptations of this life serve an essential purpose in proving us and stretching us, so that we can achieve our full potential as children of God.