Scripture Daily

Context No. 1799 of 4322 · Luke

Context · Reflection

Luke 21:19-24: in context

19“By your endurance you will win your lives. 20“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is at hand. 21Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let those who are in the middle of her depart. Let those who are in the country not enter therein. 22For these are days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. 23Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who nurse infants in those days! For there will be great distress in the land and wrath to this people. 24They will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

In his discourse about the trials to come, Jesus speaks a short word of encouragement to his disciples: by your endurance you will gain your lives. He goes on to foretell the coming distress upon Jerusalem, armies surrounding the city, days of desolation, the people scattered among the nations. But set at the head of these warnings is the promise that steadies those who must live through hard days: it is by endurance, by patient steadfastness, that they will win their lives.

The word Jesus gives is not that his followers will be spared trials, but that they will come through them by endurance. By your endurance you will gain your lives, he says. He does not promise an easy road, an exemption from the distress and pressure that the days will bring; he promises that the way to gain one's life through such times is to endure, to hold on, to persevere steadily to the end. Endurance is the key word. It is not a single heroic act, a burst of faith in a crisis, that Jesus commends, but endurance, the long, patient holding on through pressure that does not quickly relent. There is realism and encouragement together in this. The realism is that the Christian life, and often life itself, involves seasons of prolonged difficulty that we cannot escape but must endure, times when the pressure does not lift quickly and the only way through is to keep holding on. The encouragement is that endurance is enough; we do not have to be spectacular, only steadfast; we do not have to win in a single stroke, only to keep holding on. By endurance you will gain your lives. This reframes how we face our long trials. When we are in a season of prolonged difficulty, we may wish for a dramatic rescue, a quick end; and often what is given instead is the grace to endure, day by day, holding on. That patient endurance is not second best; it is, Jesus says, the very means by which we gain our lives. So the call in the hard, unrelenting seasons is not to despair that they do not quickly end, but to endure, to hold on steadily, trusting that by such endurance, and not only by dramatic deliverance, we come through and gain our lives.

In a season of prolonged difficulty that does not quickly lift, do I despair that no dramatic rescue comes, or can I take hold of Jesus' promise that by endurance, patient steadfastness, holding on day by day, I will gain my life, and set myself to endure rather than to wish only for a quick escape?

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