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AT THE BEGINNING of this year, I read that DaySpring, the greeting card company, had a Word of the Year Quiz on their website. By selecting a few personal descriptors and Bible verses that resonated with me, I could find a pre-baked, pithy word to construct my life around for the next 365 days (366 with the leap year).

The word I received? Celebrate. Perhaps a subtle, marketing ploy to sell more greeting cards for the less popular holidays?

While I didn’t remodel my resolutions after the arbitrary word, I did ponder it. The last few years have served a smorgasbord of challenges to most of us. I’ve found surprising encouragement from the admonition “the Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Hebrews 12:6). The stretching and breaking I’ve experienced has been measured from the wise hand of Love. The Good Shepherd has provided relief and nourishment for me in the presence of my enemies (Psalm 23:5).

Celebrate might not be my 2024 action verb, but I have considered the more orthodox-sounding term: Joy. I noticed it while reading the book of James. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,” encourages James (1:2a). Loosely paraphrased: Get a little celebratory. What’s the occasion, James? “Whenever you face trials of many kinds,” (v. 2b).

That’s a whole different angle to the valley of the shadow of death than what I’ve encountered. I have known the comfort of my Shepherd walking with me. I have come to terms with him orchestrating my suffering, collecting my tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8). Now, I’m being instructed to rejoice in these murky circumstances.

James continues by contrasting a confident request for wisdom with a skeptical holdout who is “double-minded and unstable in all they do” (1:8). Thomas Manton wrote in his commentary on these verses, “Nobody walks so closely with God as those who are assured of the love of God … We do not cheerfully engage in anything we have doubts over; therefore, when we do not know whether God will accept us or not, we serve God in fits and starts [i.e. double-minded man] … Never is the soul so quickened as it is by “the joy of the Lord” (Nehemiah 8:10). Faith, filling the heart with spiritual joy, gives a strength for all our duties and labors” (James, p. 39).

Are these not sweet words? The love of God filling our hearts by faith springs forth in confidence in our Saviour! We bow on the ground and worship as Job did: “though he slay me, yet will I hope in him (Job 13:15). Perhaps the better companion to joy rather than “celebrate” is hope. The refining by our merciful God is intentional and from a wise and loving Father. Joy settles deep and confident beyond human rationality. “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). And that is a sure promise to those who love him!