As Christians we know that heaven is our true home. Suffering is one way that the Lord lifts our sights toward heaven and the glories to come. Do not despise your hardships. Allow them to point you toward your eternal home.
Heaven! I love thinking, talking, praying and singing about heaven! The only trouble is, you’ve got to die in order to get there, right?
Well hi, I'm Joni Eareckson Tada and nobody wants to think about that, right?! Oh, but the Bible underscores time and again how we need to think – I mean really think – about heaven. Set your mind on things above, the book of Colossians tells us. Set your hearts not on the passing things of this earth, but on heavenly glories above where Christ is seated. And again, it says in 2 Corinthians 4, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Okay, so the Bible tells us to think a lot about heaven, but, how do you do that? Well, God has a wonderful way of giving us a little help in that regard, but he does it in a way we usually don’t appreciate at first. Samuel Rutherford back in the 17th century described this help God gives in an essay. And he wrote – now listen closely; this is really powerful. Rutherford wrote:
“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 and 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.”
Wow! Friend, that’s exactly what God did for me when he sent a broken neck my way. He blew out the lamps in my life which lit up the here and now and made it seem so exciting. And the dark despair which followed wasn’t fun, but it sure did make what the Bible says about heaven come alive. One day, when Jesus comes back, God is going to throw open heaven’s shutters. And there is not a doubt in my mind that I'll be fantastically more excited and ready for heaven than if I were on my feet. Because just being in this wheelchair, well, it naturally makes me want to go there. Broken necks, broken homes, broken hearts all have a way of crushing our illusions that this earth can ever really keep its promises. Suffering has a way of lifting our sights and moving our eyes off of this world and onto the next. God knows that earth can never really satisfy us anyway, and so suffering is his way of blowing out all the lamps that make the here and now so appealing. Your hardships get your heart focusing on things above where we belong. Plus, your hardships prepare you to meet God when you get there.
I mean, when I get to heaven and when I approach the throne of the Man of Sorrows, and when you and I meet him face-to-face, our suffering will have given us at least a tiny little taste of what he went through to purchase our redemption, and we will appreciate all that he had suffered so much more – and our loyalty to him in the midst of our own hardship will give us something to offer our Savior in return.
So today, spend some time thinking – I mean really thinking, on heavenly glories above. Don’t let your hardships drive you away from looking toward heaven; let them lift your sights and move your focus onto that celestial landscape. If God has blown out all the lamps in your life, don’t worry. He’s about to open the shutters any minute and let the light of heaven pour into your heart.
© Joni and Friends