“Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
1 Corinthians 15:51-52
Anyone who knows me, knows that I love to talk about heaven. Because physical suffering and pain are a part of my daily routine, I look forward to the time when my body will be exchanged for a new, glorified version.
Suffering is God’s way of helping us get our minds on the hereafter. And I don’t mean the “hereafter” as a psychological crutch or an escape from reality. God wishes to instill within each of us a strong desire for the imperishable, for the incorruptible, for the inheritance that never perishes, spoils, or fades.
To grip our hearts with heaven, God sometimes takes drastic measures. You and I don’t appreciate His method at first, but later we’re grateful for it. The Scottish theologian, Samuel Rutherford, described God’s dealings this way:
If God had told me some time ago that He was about to make me as happy as I could be in this world, and then had told me that He should begin by crippling me in arm or limb and removing me from all my usual sources of enjoyment, I should have thought it a very strange mode of accomplishing His purpose. And yet, how is His wisdom manifest even in this! For if you should see a man shut up in a closed room, idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wished to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps, and then throw open the shutters to let in the light of heaven.
Lord of Heaven, please blow out all the lamps in my life that light up the here and now. Help me to see suffering as Your path to heaven.
