Pure gold of joy

Paul was an old veteran as he remembered his rugged life. Shipwrecked, stoned, snakebitten, beaten, kicked out of towns and cities, left for dead—Paul had experienced it all in his service for Christ. But there was something else he had known, something that transmuted the hard lead of the pain into the pure gold of joy. Paul had learned the richness of the promise of God that he could do and endure anything through Christ’s strength. He would never have known that without the agonies he went through. At the end of his earthly life, he concludes that the benefit of God’s promise far outweighs the cost.