“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” 2 Corinthians 4:17
September 14, 2022
Hardships, distresses, beatings, imprisonments, labors, sleeplessness, hunger, in danger of death, thirty-nine lashes, shipwrecked, dangers from robbers, and much more. All this doesn’t sound like “light afflictions.” Imagine what Paul must have felt like waking up many mornings with a body ravaged by aches and pains and headaches with no access to pain killers, aspirin, and more of the same waiting on him. Paul’s perspective, the model for us as fellow pilgrims, is to have an attitude of the brevity of physical suffering in comparison to the rewards of heaven waiting on us. Such an outlook is an achievement by a thought process by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t diminish the awful nature of chronic pain but it is more than counter-balanced by a greater weight called “glory.” C. S. Lewis has famously put it together this way: “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” (The Weight of Glory, p. 26). Burdens are indeed heavy (2 Cor. 1:8), but they give way to the bright hope of our great eternal reward. H
“Look, as our greatest good comes through the sufferings of Christ, so God’s greatest glory that He hath from His saints comes through their sufferings.” Thomas Brooks