Look to the future

I flew to Mississippi to see my father in the hospital over the weekend. (He is doing better and got to come home from the hospital on Sunday; thanks for the many prayers.) Saturday we spent part of the day dodging tornadoes. Sirens were screaming the loudspeaker was blaring “Code Red”, and all over the hospital patient’s beds were rolled out into the hallways as a precaution. Dark ominous looking clouds, rain, and high winds blanketed the hospital, but fortunately for us the huge tornado went about ten miles to the north of us.

We were spared, but much of Mississippi was devastated. In an instant people’s lives were turned upside down. Some lost every possession that they had; some were seriously injured, and others lost their very lives. Friday I talked about highs and lows/valleys and peaks in WFTD. Yes, bad things happen; (not only to bad people, but to good people).

Friday a friend of mine wrote me and detailed several things that were spiraling down in his life in his own string of bad luck. He wondered aloud if God was systematically stepping up pressure across the board and he told me that he was glad he was in good company. He hilariously told me that he felt like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump riding through a hurricane from the top of the shrimp boat mast yelling at God “Is this all you’ve got!” He quickly amended that saying, “Really, I am not going to say that cause it’s not all he’s got”.

I wrote him back and told him that the Bible tells us that God uses various means to regain our attention, particularly when we are mired in wayward sin, but bad things come from satan. While it is true that an all-powerful God could prevent it, sometimes He allows it. Job is the best example that I can think of when he withstood the hurricane that devastated his life brought about by God allowing satan to do anything but take his life in a test of his faith. In the end Job withstood the storm and was blessed mightily for maintaining his faith throughout the worst things imaginable happening to him.

I try to approach hard times in the same manner. I believe that this lesson is in the Bible for that very purpose; to teach us how to deal with the hard times that visit us all. We must maintain our faith and look to the day that things turn back around and our faith is rewarded.

Hard times should result in increased spirituality as we draw close to God for comfort. As I sat up at the hospital with my father person after person from his church either came by to see him or called to wish him well. To a person they all assured him that they were praying daily for him. We talked of spiritual things including life after death in heaven and getting to see Jesus face to face as well as loved ones who gave gone on before him, like my mother and his.

Dad will be 89 in June and is in very poor health and God could call him home soon. While the death of a loved one is a cruel blow to those of us left behind who will miss them, it is a celebration to the Christian who enters heaven. All of his suffering from Parkinson’s and his current dilemma will be gone and he will have a new and glorified body free from pain and suffering and will spend eternity marveling at wonderful things that “eye has not seen and ear has not heard”.

We must remember that compared to eternity this life is similar to a vapor that it is here just for a moment and then gone. We should keep this foremost in our minds and dwell on it, rather than the temporary misfortune that we sometimes undergo.

Romans 8:18
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
2 Cor.4:17
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,