Endurance

What would it mean for you to name your current endurance as holy, not because it’s tidy, but because you’re still showing up to the relationship?

James 5:7

See here, we bless those who showed endurance. Of the endurance of Job you have heard; and you all have seen the end goal of the Holy One, that the Holy One is compassionate and merciful.

James 5:7 lifts up “the endurance of Job,” a phrase many of us know well. But the version of Job being referenced here likely draws from a later writing, The Testament of Job, a post-biblical text where Job is cast as unwavering and patient rather than the fierce, questioning voice we encounter in the Hebrew Bible.

Endurance, in real time, isn’t tidy. It is often painful, tedious, and raw. We love to bless those who have made it through, wrapping their suffering in a neat theological bow. But that does little for those in active pain. The Holy One’s mercy is not found in minimizing suffering, but in Her presence within it.

Endurance is not blind obedience. It is holding life in its brutal complexity and still turning toward a relationship with God. Job’s story, even in its messiness, ends in divine encounter. The compassionate and merciful Holy One does not demand silence or resolve. She invites us to wrestle, weep, rage, and remain.

That, too, is holy. That, too, is endurance.

What would it mean for you to name your current endurance as holy, not because it’s tidy, but because you’re still showing up to the relationship?

—Dax Franklin-Hicks