II Corinthians 4:16-18 says, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
When I’ve read these verses in the past, the thought I’ve usually had is how short and insignificant our struggles on earth are compared with eternity in heaven. That’s certainly a valid thought, but this passage hit me differently the other day. It struck me that God wants our lives to start looking like heaven now, here, in our everyday lives on earth.
If you grew up in church, you most likely grew up praying the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Through all my years of reciting that on Sundays, it never occurred to me that I was asking for earth to become like heaven.
I don’t think it’s enough for us to just grit our teeth and bear the light momentary afflictions of earthly life while we wait for the glory of heaven. God is ready to heal and redeem our afflictions now, to transform our lives on earth to look more and more like the glorious, resurrected life we’ll have in heaven.
That’s a nice abstract idea, but what does that even look like? That’s a big question, but here’s a small piece of what I think about that.
In my last post, I wrote about the transition from feeling consumed by affliction to being healed and not having any painful feelings associated with remembering the affliction. (It’s not lost on me that I wrote about being afflicted with the sniffles while Paul was writing to the persecuted church.) It struck me that what I was writing about was basically the difference between wounds and scars.
Between years of playing sports and burning myself cooking and baking, I’ve developed quite a collection of scars on my arms and legs. They’re all evidence of past moments (or days or weeks) of pain. One on my elbow is a reminder of that time I flew over the handlebars of my bike when I was twelve, and my legs are covered in tokens of the countless times I tore up my knees and shins on the softball field.
You know what’s amazing? Absolutely none of my scars hurt now, no matter how much I poke or prod at them. They’re all products of my skin’s incredible power to heal itself from traumatic damage.
After 28 years of being alive, I’ve also accumulated my share of emotional scars. Scars don’t just show up as such, though. All of them come from some kind of wound, and wounds can’t become scars until they heal. Emotional wounds are less obvious than their bleeding, pus-oozing physical cousins, but they hurt just as much or more.
They also take more than peroxide, Neosporin, and bandages to heal. It’s a good thing God loves to bring healing and wholeness. Isaiah 61 says that Jesus came “to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound…to comfort all who mourn.”
A big part of living a heavenly life here on earth is inviting Jesus to heal your wounds (more details on that in my next post). It’s not an easy process – just having those things exposed is uncomfortable – but it brings such an incredible freedom when your deepest hurts become pain-free scars.
