Whatever in ministry is sucking you dry, know this, your trouble has an expiration date. You are on the long road, and perhaps it feels as though there is no end – but there is, and your ability to take the next step depends on your clear view of the finish line. When you are really suffering, you need a perspective that goes farther than this moment, or even a week from now or a month from now, or a year from now. You need a perspective that stretches all the way into eternity. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 offers this perspective: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 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 (here’s the long road perspective) but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
How can we call real suffering light and momentary? It can almost seem flippant and calloused. But this is what makes all the difference, when we look down a road that leads all the way to eternity, an eternity that carries a “weight of glory,” so much truth and goodness pressing down, so hounded by the grace and mercy of God we won’t be able to take it all in. We catch this weight of glory snippets here and there in this life, but it’s coming in its fullest. And while we long for that day, what can shut out all possibility of catching glimpses of it now is refusing the light and momentary affliction. In hard moments I don’t want this. I would trade a bit of that weight of glory for a bit of relief. Which means, I think, that I only have eyes for the seen, and need some grace and perhaps a few minutes to focus on all that I cannot see, the deepest, truest, reality of all.
And when I embrace this reality, of all the unseen but lasting things, suddenly all the ways I am “wasting away” isn’t something to run from, it was the plan all along. Because what is the point, really, of passing the finish line well rested, spic-and-span, choreographed, calculated, and curated? Why not give it all, empty out, and use all of self up, until there is nothing left but Christ? Because either way there will be nothing left but Christ. Are you wasting away today? Greater, deeper, truer things are growing, and those things aren’t just in your ministry, they are inside you. As you waste away, may unseen glory be putting down roots, swelling with growth, and bursting into flower, and when it all goes to seed may the next generation live in the shade of what you grew.
Taking it Further: What feels like a weight now, that can be renamed by faith, “a light momentary affliction”? How does seeing the finish line change your service today?
