“For 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.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

Light and momentary???  The past week and a half a nasty flu virus has been bouncing around my family.  “Light and momentary” is not the first descriptor that comes to mind!  🙂 In fact there’s quite a few bad things that we could hardly call “light and momentary,” right?  Hearing the doctor say, “It’s cancerous,” getting a foreclosure notice, or losing a loved one.  Light and momentary?

Really?  You see, when we focus our attention on what we see with our eyes, our visible condition, our difficulties and troubles, it’s pretty easy for us to become discouraged or disappointed or frustrated or upset or angry.

The reality is that we live in a world full of sin and its consequences and we can see it.  But God directs our attention elsewhere.  God wants us to see what is not seen, not what is seen.  He refocuses our attention on the eternal glory that HE has secured for us with Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

In the grand scheme of things our lives are a mere speck of dust compared with eternal glory.  So as you go about your tasks, as you face life’s difficulties, see what is not seen – the eternal glory Jesus won for you and through it God gives you a certain joy, a certain peace, a certain hope, no matter what!  So indeed, compared with eternal glory our troubles are “light and momentary.”

Seeing what is not seen, not what is seen, just like you,

pastor