My thoughts then drifted to my sister-in-law who suffers from facial paralysis and impaired speech due to a brain condition. The other day I watched her eyes well up with tears as she expressed how much she wanted to talk normally with her children. I don't know how she does it. Her hopes rest on the verses from Job 19:25-27 "As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand on the earth. And after my skin is destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see Him with my own eyes--I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" She knows that the paralysis and verbal limitations are overwhelming but only temporary.
I also think of my best friend who has a daughter with disabilities. In the last five years the only time she has gotten a full nights sleep is on the occasion that someone offers to babysit overnight. She watches helplessly as her daughter deteriorates mentally and physically, and she knows that her daughter's days are limited. I don't know she does it! She has shared with me that God does not give us what He knows we can handle, He gives us what He knows we can't handle so that we are completely dependent on Him. She clings to the truth that God is faithful. Every time she sees a rainbow she is reminded that God cares about the suffering of her daughter and that it is only temporary.
Even though this current suffering seems like it will last forever, it is not forever. What is forever, is our eternal home. Where we will live in joy with our Savior. Where He will wipe away every tear and there will be no more disease, separation, despair, or death.
"For this momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
1 Special thanks to our friend Chris Anderson for this photo.
So well written and such hope-affirming thoughts. Keeping the eternal perspective is vital to our Perseverance. Even tho "now" seems like "forever," it is only momentary, lightweight, and will be totally reversed in eternity. Meantime, somehow, God is glorified by the afflictions we endure by His grace.
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