Balancing Glory By Melissa Hanberry — 4 hours ago For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Cor. 4:17 Lately I find myself practicing oral arguments much like an unhinged defendant willing to forego sound counsel just to have the platform in court. It appears that Maggie’s cancer has taken my already pronounced innate desire for fairness and morphed it into a compulsion for justice. I want a hearing before God. I’ll start with a list of each scar, affected organ, moment of nausea, hour of loneliness, delay, disappointment, and dying dream. Then I’ll recite her virtues like faith, patience, gentleness, kindness, and modesty. And when I finish, I’ll step back and wait. Wait for justice. Wait for some kind of answer. How much does suffering weigh? Long before my own thoughts on the subject, Paul offered his to a court of peers. Found in 2 Cor. 4:7-18, he gives a classic “list of trials” to place in the left scale pan, offering them up in contrast to God’s counterweight on the right. As I read Paul’s list, I checkmark and compare my family’s state of affairs. Afflicted. Troubled and pressed by circumstances not of our choosing. Perplexed. Oh, yes. Questions dog our days. I like how one writer put it in his own words echoing Paul’s use of puns: at wits end, but not out of our wits. I’ve personally walked the full length of the bridge linking those two. Persecuted. Yes, pursued from doubts within more than from without. Cast down. Blind sided and thrown into the ropes. Been there. Thankfully, Paul didn’t stop with his list alone. For each trial, he added a correction to his load. Not crushed, not despairing, not forsaken, not killed. God’s balance to the weight of our burdens is just as much about what we’re spared as it is any compensation we might receive. With each consolation, the left side eases a bit. And getting those “but nots” out in the open they begin to look familiar, don’t they? Crushed. Despairing. Forsaken. Killed. My trials are but a draft to tease the scales in comparison to His sacrifice. Infinity is double-sided, represented on paper by two loops of a sideways “eight”. At an imperceptibly small point in the middle sits a trifling dot of overlapping ink we call time. Eternity endlessly circles in each direction bearing an eternal weight of glory held in balance forever. How much does suffering weigh? Just enough. Never enough to balance His infinite glory. But enough to redirect my view from justice to mercy. Enough to remind me this world is not my home nor should it seem so. Enough to train me for grasping eternity as stated perfectly by one Jewish rabbi “to strengthen arms that they may lay hold upon the world to come.” Enough.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 23:56:54 +0000
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