Spiritual Thought

I'm deviating from my normal tone to share a thought I had last week as I was reading through Job. I wanted to share it in Sunday School last week, but I didn't have a chance, so I am sharing it here.

One of the verses we tend to read in Job is chapter 5, verse 17. "Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore, despite not thou the chastening of the Almighty:"

That is a pretty depressing thought. We have to have Job-like trials and still be happy on top of them?  But that verse in and of itself is not a complete thought. It ends in a colon, meaning that the rest of the thought is still to come. Verse 17 really must be read with verse 18, which tells us why we can be happy despite hard things happening.

Job 5: 17-18

"Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole."

I don't think this is saying that for every trial there is an equal and opposite blessing. It doesn't work that way and it wouldn't be a trial of faith if it did. It is saying that Christ is able to lift us out of any grief or sorrow and that his grace is sufficient for our needs at any time. Sometimes we like to keep a tally of all our trials (I've been doing it all year), so we can make sure we're getting enough blessings to cancel out the trials. But really, the fact that we have access to the Atonement and a chance at salvation is greater than the sum of any trials we could experience and the reason why we can still have hope even when things are hard. It doesn't necessarily mean that we have to walk through trials with smiles plastered on our faces saying, "Gosh, I really love this trial," but that despite our grief, there is that underlying hope and happiness because we have a larger perspective and can see the end from the beginning.