Scripture Daily

Context No. 1874 of 4322 · Sirach

Context · Reflection

Sirach 2:1-18: in context

1My son, if you come to serve the Lord, prepare your soul for temptation. 2Set your heart aright, constantly endure, and don’t make haste in time of calamity. 3Cling to him, and don’t depart, that you may be increased at your latter end. 4Accept whatever is brought upon you, and be patient when you suffer humiliation. 5For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. 6Put your trust in him, and he will help you. Make your ways straight, and set your hope on him. 7All you who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy. Don’t turn aside, lest you fall. 8All you who fear the Lord, put your trust in him, and your reward will not fail. 9All you who fear the Lord, hope for good things, and for eternal gladness and mercy. 10Look at the generations of old, and see: Who ever put his trust in the Lord, and was ashamed? Or who remained in his fear, and was forsaken? Or who called upon him, and he neglected him? 11For the Lord is full of compassion and mercy. He forgives sins and saves in time of affliction. 12Woe to fearful hearts, to faint hands, and to the sinner who goes two ways! 13Woe to the faint heart! For it doesn’t believe. Therefore it won’t be defended. 14Woe to you who have lost your patience! And what will you all do when the Lord visits you? 15Those who fear the Lord will not disobey his words. Those who love him will keep his ways. 16Those who fear the Lord will seek his good pleasure. Those who love him will be filled with the law. 17Those who fear the Lord will prepare their hearts, and will humble their souls in his sight. 18We will fall into the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of men; for as his majesty is, so also is his mercy.

Sirach opens with a bracing word to anyone who would follow God. My son, if you come to serve the Lord, prepare your soul for testing. Set your heart, endure steadfastly, and do not be hasty in time of calamity. Cling to him and do not depart. Accept whatever comes and be patient in humiliation; for gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable people in the furnace of testing. Put your trust in him, and he will help you. And he asks: who ever trusted the Lord and was put to shame?

Sirach begins where we might not expect a call to serve God to begin: with a warning to prepare for testing. If you come to serve the Lord, he says, prepare your soul for temptation and trial. He does not promise that following God will make life easy; he warns, honestly, that it will include testing, and tells us to be ready for it. This is a realism we need, because we sometimes come to God with the unspoken expectation that devotion will spare us hardship, that if we serve him faithfully, things will go smoothly; and then, when trials come, we are shaken and disillusioned, as though something had gone wrong. Sirach heads off that illusion: expect testing; prepare for it; the path of serving God runs through the furnace, not around it. And he gives the reason, and the hope, in a single image: gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable people in the furnace of testing. The testing is not a sign that God has abandoned us or that our faith has failed; it is the furnace in which faith, like gold, is refined and proved. The trials are not meaningless; they are the fire that purifies. And so Sirach's counsel is to endure, to cling to God and not depart, to be patient, to keep trusting through the testing rather than turning away from it. And he grounds this in a question worth carrying: who ever trusted the Lord and was put to shame? Who called on him and was neglected? Look at the generations, Sirach says, and you will find that those who trusted God through their testing were not, in the end, disappointed. So the word to anyone who would serve God is both sobering and steadying: expect the furnace, do not be surprised or shaken by it, and cling to God through it, for the trial that tests you is the fire that refines you, and no one who trusted the Lord was finally put to shame.

Do I come to God expecting that serving him will spare me hardship, so that I am shaken and disillusioned when trials come, or can I heed Sirach's realism, preparing my soul for testing, and cling to God through the furnace, trusting that the trial which tests me is the fire that refines me, and that no one who trusted the Lord was put to shame?

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