Pleasant Stone Devotional Meditation: August 22

“Count it all joy … count it all joy …” ~ James 1:2a
COUNT it all joy when your very breath seems choked off by the load of grief in your heart? Count it all joy when the house is so empty, you think of beating your head against the wall just to make a sound of some kind? Count it joy when you can’t imagine what it would be like to stop weeping? Count it joy when one ghastly scene won’t be wiped out of your memory? Count it joy in this pain? In this anxiety? In this uncertainty?
Joy in this black and endless hour? YES. “Rejoice … giving thinks always for all things.”
Joy as we know it in Christ, has little or nothing to do with laughter or happiness. With tears or sadness. It is, as Oswald Chambers declared, “God in your blood.” And the joy remains as long as God remains! When I [Eugenia Price, the author] cried from my own heart for a method of giving thanks even whey my heart was breaking, God gave me proof in the lives of some of His rare saints, a definition of His joy from the book of His beloved Oswald Chambers, and the instruction that I am to “accept” it all with this kind of joy. Accept it all with God in my blood. Still my own heart drew back under certain circumstances. And God said that I was not to look at the circumstances, but at Him. He reminded me in countless little ways that He is love. That He is a redeemer. That He redeems every circumstance. He is permitted to touch. To my own humiliation, He then pointed me to one of my own books, Early Will I Seek Thee, and I read the last two chapters on pouring out everything to God as a love offering. Suddenly I saw that when I do this, I can accept anything. It is no longer in my hands, but in His.
“[And] I know that my Redeemer liveth …”