Any respectful sommelier knows this: good wines come from tortured grapes. It’s an old secret accidentally discovered in California vineyards: the more grapes must fight to survive, the higher the quality of the wine it produces.
Thus, the rocky and arid slopes are useless, agriculturally, with the exception of some masochistic grape varieties, especially the Bordeaux grape variety. Grapes harvested after a season of suffering produce wines that experts will describe as “good year”.
This phenomenon is not only an idiosyncrasies of oenology, but also of theology.
If I ask you what makes a good year in your life good, you can respond with one or more of these generic blessings: health, professional success, relationship satisfaction, financial prosperity (or at least solvency), but you’d be wrong.
I mean, at least half-false. It makes a good year of all that advances in our sanctification, that is, that it most closely resembles Christ, brings us closer to God and increases our performance in what glorifies God.
This can mean experiencing God’s grace through physically favorable blessings, or it can mean enduring through different levels of testing. to your plan? (Romans 8. 28).
If I had to choose between a year of tranquility and joy or a year of deprivation and disappointment, if it were up to her, I would choose the path of comfort. Not you? But it doesn’t just depend on that. Calvary tends to make us look more like Christ, more effectively than tranquility. See how James begins his letter: “My brothers, try with all joy to go through various tests, knowing that the test of your faith, once confirmed, produces perseverance. Now, perseverance must have a complete action, so that you are perfect and complete, in no case deficient? (James 1,2-4).
Tests? The disadvantages of circulation or an ingrown nail, unbearable pain and emotional disorders?God uses them to produce in us the spiritual maturity that affects our lives now and in eternity (2 Corinthians 4:17, a verse worth remembering).
And the trials not only affect you and your eternity, but glorify God.
In this you rejoice, however, in the present, briefly, if necessary, you will be saddened by various trials, so that once you confirm the value of your faith, much more precious than the perishable gold, even determined by fire, results in praise, glory, and honor in the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1. 6-7; see also 1 Peter 4:12-13).
So when someone asks what their hopes are for next year, perhaps a theologically appropriate answer is: “a year in which God exudes the greatest glory of my life, whatever the circumstances, it is a good year. “