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I must be in a stretch of bad luck right now. I got to enjoy kidney stones a few weeks ago, and then yesterday I broke a tooth in half. But the real bummer wasn’t just the jagged edge of my molar that I couldn’t keep my tongue away from, or the exposed nerves that made drinking my morning coffee a torturous affair (I still had to do it though)–no, the real bummer is that I couldn’t just get a simple crown from the dentist, I had to get all of my other fillings replaced because they, too, are dangerously cracked.

Isn’t that the way it always seems to work out? You go in for a cleaning, and you leave with a filling. You go in to get a flat tire repaired, and you end up purchasing four brand-new tires instead. I guess there might be a few dynamics at work.

1. We’re constantly being taken advantage of

2. We’re in much worse shape than we think we are

3. OR…sometimes the expensive, frustrating, time-consuming setbacks are actually God’s preventative mercy

I’m not trying to over-spiritualize stuff like toothaches; however, I would much rather buy four brand new tires than have Jessica experience a blowout on the freeway. I would rather pay the price on the front-end than scramble to pay for a crisis on the back-end.

James 1:2 says to consider these challenges “all joy”–perhaps because James knows there’s mercy buried somewhere inside them.