by Anna Haiar
More to the Story
“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
2 Corinthians 4:17, English Standard Version
Many fishermen have stood on this dock, day after day, casting line after line, only to eventually walk away empty handed. Regardless of how the day went before, those fishermen still return full of hope that the big kahuna is just one more cast away. And yet, how many times have we gone to Jesus, day after day, prayer after prayer, and also come away unsettled, without answers, and no resolution to our pain? In 2 Corinthians, Paul does not call our pain imaginary. He calls it light and momentary—not because it feels that way while we are in it, but because he is comparing it to something beyond our understanding.
Paul mentions that our affliction is preparing us for something. It is not wasted motion. It is not a detour God failed to prevent. In ways we rarely see while we are walking through it, present sorrow is being used to ready us for a glory so substantial that Paul can only describe it as “beyond all comparison.” What feels impossible now will one day be covered in the crushing weight of glory.
Faith asks us to look beyond what feels insurmountable in this moment, at this time, in this place. Because sometimes the thing we are staring at is so big that we cannot see anything else. But God sees beyond it. He sees what we cannot see. He sees the whole story when all we can see is the page we are on. And somehow, by faith, we learn to trust Him with the pages we haven’t reached yet.
The circumstances in front of us may change. They may not change as quickly as we want them to, but neither our circumstances nor our suffering get the final word. Christ does. And because He has already defeated sin and death, we know that what is seen is not the end of the story.
There is more to this story than what we can see.
And God is already there.
Copyright Family of Christ Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
