An Eternal Perspective – May 28, 2020

Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:17,18

An Eternal Perspective

Imagine a regular day. If you are awake for 17 hours of that day, that means you have a little over a thousand minutes awake. Imagine for one minute of that day, something bad happened. Your car wouldn’t start. You got into a fight with a friend. You felt pain in part of your body. Then after that minute, nothing bad happened. In fact, for every minute of the rest of that day, only great things happened. You were able to eat all your favorite foods. You spent your time with people you love. Everything worked the way it was supposed to.

At the end of this day, how would you describe it? When you thought back, what would you focus on? Would you think about that single bad minute? Probably not. Instead, you probably couldn’t stop talking about the other thousand minutes and all the great things that happened. In fact, maybe even that single bad minute wouldn’t seem so bad in light of everything else.

So far, 2020 doesn’t seem to be a great year for a lot of us. There may be some real problems you are working through and some sadness that you feel. God wants you to find hope in the certainty that these troubles are only momentary. He wants you to give it an eternal perspective. The temporary troubles of 2020 cannot compare with the never-ending years of perfect joy every follower of Jesus will experience in heaven.

Your troubles are real, but God reminds you that from a perspective of eternity, they are light and momentary. Your time with Jesus will be perfect and forever. Fix your eyes on that eternity.

Prayer:
Eternal God, help me to focus not on my earthly troubles but on the eternity I will have with you. Amen.