Austin's Blog

The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” How is the passing of my only son light? Valerie and I were at lunch and I said, “This certainly doesn’t feel light to me.” It is light only in comparison with the weightiness of heaven and the glory that it will reveal. This is the heaviest thing on earth and if the eyes of my heart do not look beyond the right now to the horizon, it will lead to despair. It will cripple. It will become too heavy. When weighed against eternity though, this affliction is light. It is, indeed, momentary.

What will heaven do to this pain? First, God’s infinite wisdom will be revealed and a harmony will exist where earthly reconciliation appears seemingly impossible. Fyodor Dostoevsky writes, “I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.” There truly are no sorrows that heaven can’t heal. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things will be gone forever. Heaven will fully and finally usher these hardships away.

Second, Heaven won’t just reconcile and help us to understand the plan, but will actually transform these painful realities into glorious ones. C.S. Lewis writes, “They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.” Paul says that the trials are actually preparing or producing for us an eternal weight of glory. Our experience of heaven is being shaped right now in this agony and this agony will be turned on its head the first second we arrive there. This “light affliction” isn’t just something to endure before I go to Heaven. This “light affliction” is helping produce the glory I will experience in Heaven. This agony is lasting, but it is not everlasting. It is momentary. In ten thousand years from now, I will be able to look back on this moment and glory in it. Again, Paul writes, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” (Romans 8:18)

Third, the knowledge and certainty of this glorious future in Heaven works backward into the present to cause us to endure, persevere, and stand when there is not an earthly ounce of ability to do so. “For now, we are to look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.” As we feel we are wasting away (2 Corinthians 4:16) under this terribly painful trial, we do not lose heart because we fix our gaze heavenward. The fixing our eyes on the eternal actually works to sustain and stabilize us in our grief. Dr. Sam Storm writes, “Christians are not asked to treat pain as though it were pleasure, or grief as though it were joy, but to bring all earthly adversity into comparison with heavenly glory and thereby be strengthened to endure.” Biblical hope is a memory of the future and it is surely certain. We have a living and steadfast hope. It is an anchor for our souls. We will take hold of what God has said about the future and cling to it. Doing so right now does something in us.

Sometimes I feel the immense weight of grief over the fact that I only have memories rather than the real thing right now. I dearly miss my boy. Yet, he is the one most alive right now. Those who belong to Him may die, yet they live (John 11:25-26). Randy Alcorn writes, “Not only will we see his face and live, but we will likely wonder if we ever lived before we saw his face!” He is beholding the gentle and tender face of Jesus at this very moment. The memories I possess now will melt into divine realities. When we sing at Church about Heaven, my eyes tear up now not only because Jesus is there waiting for me, but because my precious boy is also there by His side doing the same. Even so, come Lord Jesus.