2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (NET)
“…Even if our physical body is wearing away, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary, light suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison because we are not looking at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
Are you trying to dodge, avoid, reject, change up, or get away from something you find threatening, demanding, distasteful, unpleasant?
Let’s refer to whatever that is as a difficulty. The message of the Scriptures seems inescapable: that difficulty was either uniquely ordained for you by Jesus or is subject to his redeeming power to develop in you insights or a perspective that will end up in one way or another profoundly and positively influencing everyone you meet in this world and the next.
What you learn by reacting industriously to the difficulty will reveal to others through you something distinctive of Jesus’ perspective or thoughts. It is something of him or from him they can encounter no where else in all creation. And, while in this world, it stands to help soften their hearts to be more receptive to his direct work within them.
It is just such an influence that, I’m persuaded, is an eternal, incommensurable weight of glory — a glory that elsewhere the Apostle Paul writes “will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18 NIV)
