Perspective

I've been discouraged lately. Suffering surrounds us. Is this what happens at my age? Fred and I have each lost a sister and my best friend from junior high lost her brother recently. Several friends have cancer and another friend's child is breaking her heart. Our parents are getting old and may not be long in this world. How do we survive this stage of life with all its sadness? How do we get past the fear of what may happen next? How do we minister to those suffering around us?


We live in a corrupt, broken world. Some people do evil things. Our beautiful creation is polluted and toxic. It's no wonder we get sick. It is easy to slide into hopeless despair, and then bitterness, complaining, and defeat.


But this is not the way the world was meant to be. No wonder we never quite feel at home in it. All creation is groaning and waiting in expectation for a world to come.


"We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies...


So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (Paul writing in II Corinthians 4)


I always get stuck on the phrase "light momentary affliction." I think, what my friends are suffering is not light and momentary! What did Paul suffer anyway? He endured imprisonment, beatings, stoning, and shipwreck. His life was constantly threatened. That doesn't sound light and momentary either. But then we realize the passage says "beyond all comparison." COMPARED to what lies ahead, these trials are light and momentary. "For we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city to come." (Hebrews 13:14) Our lives on this earth are so short compared to eternity, the place where God wipes away every tear, and there will no longer be any death, mourning, crying or pain.


C.S. Lewis ends his Chronicles of Narnia with these words:


“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”