In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, check this out, if need be you've been grieved by various trials.

Now here is where I think the Christian life is more complicated than some people give it credit for.

He is talking about, not about the old

contrast of why are you grieving you should be rejoicing. Rather he is

saying you're grieving and you're rejoicing. The two coexist at the same time, often

in a Christian's life. I have grief, I have hardship, I have difficulty, but I have greater

rejoicing than the grief that I have. And I think that Christians need not remove all grief from their hearts. We simply need to fall back upon the joy that we have in Christ.

This is actually, let me read it again.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while,

if need be, you have been grieved by various trials. Christians are not supposed to put on a mask of joy,

but instead an ocean of calm beneath the storms of life.

That's what our Christian joy is like.

It's more like the calm ocean underneath the vicious storm

that's going on.

We've got El Nino Gordo or whatever

they're calling it nowadays going on off the coast right coming our way what do they call it

to the goddilla of El Nino I don't know how many languages we have to use to

describe something but we've got this thing coming our way.

But you know, if you could go into the middle

of the worst part of this thing and then just

go underwater a little ways, you'd probably find

that everything's just peachy keen.

...