This post has been on my mind for the last week and the events in CT today gave it new meaning. Anyone who knows me knows that “emotional” and “compassionate” aren’t generally the first words people use to describe me. If you’re looking for someone to empathize over your favorite shirt getting ruined in the wash or the hangover headache you have this morning, I’m not your gal. However, the truth is that when it comes to the really serious stuff, I actually empathize almost too much.
We live in such a broken world and it’s easy to think that sin and sorrow have won out. You don’t have to look far to find people who are hurting, sick, despairing, stressed out, and desperate. Even without senseless tragedies like the shooting this week, pain and loss are all around us. Within my own small circle of friends and family, I’ve seen loss of relationships, finances, health, loved ones, and joy. It’s really easy to get caught up in all the loss and pain of those we care about. Sometimes watching them go through these things is worse than going through it ourselves.
It hit me this week that I’d gotten wrapped up in all of it again. Wrapped up in the stress money troubles in our home and my family, wrapped up in the pain of people I care about, wrapped up in the tragedy in Newtown and the crushing agony those parents must be feeling. It would be so easy to get angry or bitter or cynical or numb. God reminded me of a few things though. First, this world is not our home. Life on it is messy but these “light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor. 4:17). Our true citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20) and, once there, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Rev 21:4). I know it sounds cliché, one of those things you say like “everything will be fine” or “it’ll all work out.” But it’s a lot more than that. For one thing, everything is not always fine and it doesn’t always work out but this is a guarantee, a promise from the One who cannot lie. We have to get it through our heads that while the choices we make here on earth are definitely important and can have eternal consequences; our lives here are only one tiny dot in the picture of eternity. Our short time here is supposed to be spent glorifying the God that we will get to worship forever one day.
God didn’t say that our troubles here were unimportant or that our pain isn’t genuine but he called them light and momentary troubles because they are so brief in light of eternity. This brings me to the second thing God reminded me of this week. We’re studying John 1:1-14 at church and it’s talking about God becoming flesh in the body of Jesus. It reminded me that God is not a puppet master sitting up in heaven removed from our struggles. He put on flesh and walked among us, knowing pain and temptation just like us. Hebrews 4:15 says that he has “been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” When his friend, Lazarus, had died, he wept even knowing that he would raise him again because he felt the same pain we do over the loss. He emptied himself and took on the appearance of a man (Phil 2). He didn’t stop there, but took on the pain, the loss, the struggle, and the weariness of being a man. Ultimately, God wrapped in flesh, the all-powerful, all knowing Master of the Universe chose to submit himself to death on a cross so that we can have this hope and promise of heaven to give us strength and healing on earth. That is very real and something that we can hold on to and take joy in knowing.
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