Transparent Christian Magazine

Where is your mind when life wears on you? It does; we all know that. In the midst of it, it can be difficult to maintain a mind fixed on Christ. But this is one of the most important things, for the mind is how He transforms (Romans 12:1-2).

The weather in Nashville the past few months hasn’t helped for optimism. A few days of rain are refreshing – but off and on for weeks? It’s October, time for pumpkins, but the ones in the patch down the road from our house all rotted: Too much rain.

Go figure.

One day as I struggled to keep my mind off the negative in life, I turned to Psalms 116 for my daily reading. The psalmist describes his “snares of death” and the “pangs of Sheol” in life. In distress and anguish, he lifts a cry for deliverance from it all…then he says this:

“Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For (the Lord) has delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”

What in this earthly life really matters, what is so difficult, when we know the truth that our souls are delivered from death? Death’s sting is no more. We will walk in the land of the living, never the land of death, for “everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die,” according to our Savior.

Our pastor’s son was killed in a car accident a few months ago, at age 19. After a month hiatus from the pulpit, now he’s preaching on Heaven, reminding us where his boy is, changing our outlook on what we think of as a most sorrowful thing. The loss of the family is grievous, of course, but the place where Josiah lives now is far better than this place…and that is no reason for sorrow.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” II Corinthians 4:16.

In Romans 8, Paul says it this way: “Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Glory. Revealed in undeserving us.

It will far outweigh all we endure.

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Oh, that we would keep eternal perspective.

Allie