The Troubles You Can See Right Now

The Troubles You Can See Right Now

That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

What if you knew you were going to win the lottery, not right now but just in time for retirement? How would that knowledge affect your response to stock market declines, a tough economy, job loss? I’m guessing you would have financial concerns, but not many of the kind that keep you up all night.

Or what if you knew that a child suffering from a debilitating disease was sooner or later going to be completely healed? How would that affect your thinking about his or her future?

Paint the bleakest scenario you like, but then add a happily-ever-after ending and you will begin to see what Christ has promised for us. The apostle Paul believed in happy endings. How else could he have characterized his own prodigious afflictions as small, calling them “light and momentary troubles” (2 Corinthians 4:17, NIV)?

We know the Bible paints a vivid picture of what heaven will be like. Let’s try to imagine it with the help of Sally Lloyd-Jones and The Jesus Storybook Bible:

Where is the sun? Where is the moon? They aren’t needed anymore. God is all the Light people need. No more darkness! No more night!

And the King says, “Look! God and his children are together again. No more running away. Or hiding. No more crying or being lonely or afraid. No more being sick or dying. Because all those things are gone. Yes, they’re gone forever. Everything sad will come untrue.^a

Today I challenge you to start living your life by this remarkable truth—that one day soon “everything sad will come untrue.” There will be a happy ending.

Heavenly Father, thank you for giving me a glimpse of how the story ends. Help me to look, not at the troubles I can see right now, but at what you have promised for the future.

^a Sally Lloyd Jones, The Jesus Storybook Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 347.