The Weight of Eternity

I need to counsel my heart this week, my friends.

I am dealing with something that is sucking the life right out of me.  At least, that's how it feels.  I'd like nothing better than to just "do what's right for me," but I want to make sure I'm not just being selfish. I am praying for direction and wisdom, strength and courage.

I know this trouble is temporary.  In light of eternity, everything is ~ even my whole entire life, regardless of how long it might end up being.  But sometimes troubles feel so overwhelming and endless, don't they?  Like you're being crushed under the weight of them.

But God's Word promises that our momentary, character-building troubles are also building something much bigger ~ an eternal glory that outweighs them all.

How heavy is that, do you think? To OUTWEIGH our troubles, our stresses, the things that weigh SO heavily on our hearts and minds that sometimes it's hard to breathe...  Have you ever thought about it?

A few years ago, I read Max Lucado's It's Not About Me and a certain passage just jumped out at me.  It's something I need to remind myself of today.  I want to counsel my own heart and hopefully offer you some encouragement as well. I hope you get the same sense of overwhelming weightlessness I did:

...heaven gives this promise: "our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Corinthians 4:17 NKJV).

The words "weight of glory" conjure up images of the ancient pan scale. Remember the blindfolded lady of justice? She holds a pan scale -- two pans, one on either side of the needle. The weight of a purchase would be determined by placing weights on one side and the purchase on the other.

God does the same with your struggles. On one side he stacks all your burdens. Famines. Firings. Parents who forgot you. Bosses who ignored you. Bad breaks, bad health, bad days. Stack them up, and watch one side of the pan scale plummet.

Now witness God's response. Does he remove them? Eliminate the burdens? No, rather than take them, he offsets them. He places an eternal weight of glory on the other side. Endless joy. Measureless peace. An eternity of him. Watch what happens as he sets eternity on your scale.

Everything changes! The burdens lift. The heavy becomes light when weighed against eternity. If life is "just a moment," can't we endure any challenge for a moment? (p. 55-56)

I hope that made your steps a little lighter, whatever you're walking through right now and whatever you will be walking through in the weeks, months ~ even years ~ ahead.