“Those who weep or who rejoice or who buy things should not be absorbed by their weeping or their joy or their possessions…For this world as we know it will soon pass away.”
I liked this reminder that it’s okay to weep, but not good to lose yourself in the weeping, because whatever I’m weeping over isn’t forever and it isn’t all in all.
This life and the stuff of this life – joy and hardships alike – this is not it.
It will soon pass away and I will be whole and healed and in the presence of my Savior. And being with Him at last…the stuff of this life, big and overwhelming as it is, can’t compare to it.
Storms always rain themselves out eventually.
I saw two kinds of caves this week as we camped. One was dark and icy and tight and down very far, and I didn’t have the confidence to explore it.
The other got dark, but it was wide enough to walk through side by side with Cody, and just as it got too hard to see for sure what the ground was like underfoot, soft light rimmed the edge of the corner up ahead. We couldn’t see very much where we were, but we knew there was a way out, and we were heading toward it.
I have a much deeper appreciation for caves when I’m not walking through them alone and I know there’s an exit on the other side.
There is beauty in the dark, the moist air, the stillness of a cave. Perhaps hard and confusing seasons hold beauty, too, if only we can rally the confidence to remember that we are not in them alone, and that we will certainly climb out the other side of them eventually.
Lord, I am having a hard time, but it is just for now. So help me not to become absorbed in it. Teach me to faithfully replace my attention on you, again and again all the day long. Teach me how to walk through stress and sorrow with my eyes on you, drawing from you the hope I need to keep walking and the kindness I need to handle others gently and generously.
Help me to distinguish between a cave and a grave. For you have promised that whatever this life holds, I am not buried under it forever; I am passing through it into light.
“Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.”
“No longer will there be a curse upon anything. For the throne of God and of the Lamb will be there, and his servants will worship him. And they will see his face…And there will be no night there—no need for lamps or sun—for the Lord God will shine on them.”
–Revelation 22:3-5
dig deep | draw close 