It’s testing week here on the hill! My oldest grandson and granddaughter have been here with me to take their end-of-year standardized tests. Remember those forms with all the little dots to be filled in with Number Two pencils? Testing is a big deal1 because it helps my son and daughter-in-law assess their children’s educational progress and plan for next year.
The two students bore the burden of testing like champions. They both knew the process would last only a couple of days, and when they were finished, the whole summer stretched before them, carefree.
As I read the instructions and monitored their progress, I couldn’t help thinking about some of the tests I’ve been taking in God’s sanctification school:
Medicine that is supposed to help, but instead makes me sick.
People who feel entitled to take without appreciation.
Interruptions to my plans and intrusions to my schedule.
The perversity of inanimate objects.
I’m well aware that my life is a cakewalk compared to many of my readers’. I’m also convinced that God assigns to each of us our measure of testing. He even tells us why:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:3).
My grandkids are being tested on their knowledge of math and reading with a goal in mind. Their parents want to verify that they have learned a body of material.
God, our divine Parent, is looking for steadfastness, a word that is also translated as endurance or patience, traits I admire but do not possess in abundance. (Anyone else in the same camp?)
In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus provides an example of a negative response to testing. The sower’s seed is the Word of God and the four soils are the hearts of those who hear. “And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. ” (Luke 8:13)
Falling away in a time of testing would be the polar opposite of steadfastness, endurance, and patience. I find that the “little” tests that pile up in the run of an ordinary day can sometimes hook a more extreme impatience in me than the “bigger” tests that come.
Sitting this week with the mechanics of testing at my dining room table has schooled me in the truth of God’s purposeful action in the molding and refinement of his children. We are his workmanship, a project that will continue for as long as we draw breath on this good earth.
How would your response to inconvenience, disappointment, or suffering change if you started to view it as God’s sandpaper?
Do you consider that the sanctification process is worth the pain of testing?
I hope you’ll share your thoughts in the comments!
Testing is God’s purposeful action in the molding and refinement of his children. We are his workmanship, a project that will continue for as long as we draw breath on this good earth.
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- I have to insert here the important detail that we make it just as fun as we can with tea party lunches and pushes on the swing and walks up Windy Hill and plenty of brain breaks. ↩︎
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