Jesus knows we have a hard time grasping this more significant spiritual reality. Limited by these bodies and our earthly perspective, it is hard for us to imagine our eternal future and how the way we live now and what we believe now will impact that eternal reality. And so in our every day requests for safe travel and physical health, and in our more desperate prayers for healing or deliverance amid great difficulties, we try to apply to our bodies God's promises of protection that were intended for our souls. And when we do, we're often left disappointed.
When God doesn't seem to show up and protect us, we can quickly point the finger of blame, accusing him of falling down on the job. Until our value systems line up with his, until we value the eternal life of our souls more than the temporary life of our earthly bodies, we will continue to feel disappointment with God.
God has not promised wholesale physical deliverance in this life for those who place their faith in him. But he has promised to protect our souls for eternity. And really that is so much bigger, so much better.I totally agree with the author about this. Everyone dies eventually. This morning we went to a memorial service for another member of our former church. Mac was 88 years old. His family was sad to see him go, but glad to know that he has joined his beloved wife who preceded him in death by several years. Yes, it is our souls that God protects for eternity, and I'm very glad of that.
I'm standing on the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She's an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky come down to mingle with each other. And then I hear someone on my side saying, "There, she's gone."
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side. And just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There, she's gone," there are other eyes watching her coming, and there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"
And that is dying.I love Spurgeon's description of death. I'm so thankful that Christ came and taught us how to live and how to die. I'm so grateful that He was willing to die and then be resurrected to conquer death. Because of His sacrifice, we have the assurance that we will also be resurrected never to die again. Why would anyone reject this wonderful gift and the one who gave it?
Last summer in California I met a man who had been a skydiver until, on his nineteenth jump, his parachute failed to open fully and his emergency chute wrapped itself around the partially collapsed main chute. He slammed into a dry lake bed at sixty miles an hour. Doctors thought this broken remnant of a man would never leave his hospital bed. They told him so, and he sank into black despair.
But in the hospital he had frequent visits from another patient, a man whose spinal cord had been severed in an automobile accident. This man would never walk, would never, in fact, move a finger again. But he was always cheerful. "I certainly don't recommend my situation to anyone," he would say. "And yet I can read, I can listen to music, I can talk to people . . . "
And yet: those two words shift the focus from what has been lost to what remains－and to what may still be gained. They gave such hope and determination to the skydiver that he came through his ordeal and today walks without a limp.
Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens. Dwight Eisenhower's mother was a deeply religious woman. When the future president was a boy, she would say to him, "Life deals the cards; the way you play them is up to you. There's acceptance in that philosophy － but no hint of apathy.To me the "and yet" part is what inspires me. No matter how bad things may be, we can all say "and yet". And it may be that our "and yet" in spite of our circumstances may help someone who is struggling with similar problems.
There is no question that life is difficult. In fact, it has been said that God promises four things: peace, power, purpose, and TROUBLE. For example, in the verse above Jesus reminds us quite boldly that in the world there will be trouble. But we are not merely to endure it. We are to "be of good cheer," for He has overcome the world.
Many of us have only gotten half the message. We recognize the difficulty of life and drearily drag ourselves through each day, mumbling about our burdens. (I've heard it said that "some Christians have just enough Christianity to make them miserable.") It can be different ⎼ but the choice is ours.
