One of my favorite passages is Isaiah 28:27-28.

…caraway is beaten with a rod, and cummin with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread…”

Do you ever feel like the caraway, the cummin, and the grain in this verse?

Do you ever feel like life is beating you with a stick? Like you are being ground to pieces?

Do you ever feel like all the world is against you? Like nothing goes your way? Like even God has turned away from you?

You have financial problems, and health problems, marital problems, family problems, job problems, car problems, and on and on it goes.

Joseph and Mary faced many of these troubles as well, and they had the added pressure of being the parents of the promised Messiah. Imagine that burden!

Yet as they faced their troubles and obeyed God, He sent angels and shepherds and wise men to welcome the birth of their son.

Just as with Mary and Joseph, troubles and trials in life are tools in the hand of God to mold us and shape us and make us into something beyond our imagination. When trials and troubles come into your life, you may feel like you are getting beaten with rods and ground into powder, but as Isaiah 28 says, grain must be ground to make bread.

God is making you into something great. In whatever trials you are facing, ask God these kinds of questions: Say, “Father, what are you trying to teach me in this situation? How can this trial make me more like Jesus Christ? What chaff in my life are you trying to grind out of me? How can this troubling time make me better instead of bitter?”

God wants to change your troubles into trumpets if you will only let him perform His work in you.

(This Christmas meditation is drawn from a sermon on Luke 2:1-20 I preached several years ago when I was a pastor. For more Christmas meditations, see Scriptures on Christmas.)