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Suffering vs. Everything

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Romans 8:18 NASB

I am a worm of a man. I do not do what I would like to do and the things I do I struggle with them. I not only feel like Paul did in the chapter before the above verse, I think I have taken on his plight and perfected it. And oh how I suffer.

I suffer as a wimpy man, not able to do the right. I suffer as a worldly man, always about pleasing myself. I even suffer as a committed, obedient Christian. Wow, I can’t get away from it! And by the way, if it isn’t I who suffers, it is someone I love and for whom I care. Why do we have to struggle so?

I have observed that the usually good folk tend to get the backhand from the world. They try to bless and be a blessing and the world says, “No!” I watch the tender get tenderized, the giver get taken, and the friend get fried. Why would anyone want to be good, say good, or do good?

Yet in the context of this passage, the overriding theme is that God has given us hope in Christ for the future and even for the right stinking now. Who can come against His chosen ones, effectively? God is for us, it says. He has called us to a higher calling, so if we experience downturns, sufferings, loss, we still have hope.

I just went to a church service in Mesa, AZ and heard a testimony of a gal who got in an auto accident almost 15 years ago. The accident left her paralyzed from the neck down. Her husband dumped her, her body was ruined, and her future looked bleak at best. Yet there she was proclaiming the above verse’s truth in the midst of her trauma. She boldly stated that the blessing in it all was her trauma bringing her to the place of receiving Christ’s love. She was saved to serve in pain and loss, but she now knew a better way in a crippled body than she could have known in a health one. Jesus really has a better EVERYTHING.

So I say shut up to myself and suck it up Christian and know we are not lost in space. I am probably just speaking to myself.

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