Verse of the Day for October 31

James uses an accountant's word: count it all joy. Not feel it. Count it. It is a decision about how to reckon something, made with the mind, often while the heart is still protesting.

He gives the reason in the next verse. The trying of your faith worketh patience. Testing produces something. Then comes the line that closes this month on endurance: let patience have her perfect work.

James speaks of patience as if she were a worker who has come to do a job in you. The instruction is simply to let her. Do not hurry her out. Do not interrupt her halfway because the work is uncomfortable.

Most of us want to leave a trial as quickly as we can, and that is natural. Sometimes we should pray for it to end. But James says there is a finished work waiting on the other side: that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Whole. Not missing pieces.

Anyone who has cooked a pot of beans knows that lifting the lid every five minutes does not make them soften faster. Whatever comes next for you, a new month, a new trial, a slow answer, let patience finish what she started.

Counting a trial as joy is a decision, not a feeling.

What God is finishing in you is worth not rushing.