Life is a series of tests

How many of you like taking tests? Have you ever noticed that life is a series of tests? I’m not just talking about the tests you take at school, but the tests of failure and rejection and heartbreak and loss, and a hundred other tough times that all of us experience as we pass through this life. Some of these tests are difficult; some are a breeze. Some are painful; some a mere inconvenience. But life tests all of us.

Think of some of the tests that we face. When we’re younger – school, peer pressure, changes in our body, rejection. As adults: Finding our vocation. Raising children. Concerns about our financial well-being and our future.

Do the tests get any easier as we get older? Health problems, your own and those of friends and family. More financial concerns. Life is a series of tests, one after another.

St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

I don’t know how many times that I’ve shared these words with someone going through a time of testing who replied to me that God must have thought that they were stronger than they thought they were.

Our lesson from 1 Corinthians tells us how to prepare for the testing. Paul writes, “So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.”

A physical fall can happen when the toe clearance from the floor is diminished as little as the thickness of a piece of tape on the floor. While it is important to think about the big things, the big obstacles, the big dangers that we face, it is equally important to pay attention to the small things, or those things that seem at least on the surface to be small.

This has special application for Christians, for the big sins are so obvious that it is hard to accidentally commit them. We know we are doing wrong if we head down those paths. But the smaller ones can also cause us to fall. It is the daily irritations that trip us up. The sins of omission, not doing the things we know we should be doing.

You may not like tests, but there is something that we all need to acknowledge about tests. It is by these tests that we grow. It is at times like these that we need to rely on these words of St. Paul to the church at Corinth. We may think we will crumble. We may think we will fall. But this is God’s promise – we will have the strength to endure.