Hope for the Hurting: For the Hurting: Encouragement for Suffering Seasonsنموونە

During our most frightening or painful moments, how can we fix our eyes on Jesus, and how can this help us live our faith journeys well?

Scholars sum up Hebrews in one phrase: Jesus is better than anything else, and life with Him is far better than life without Him. And the life He’s promised us and that yet awaits us, is far better than the best life you and I could ever experience today.

Remembering those truths provides strength, inspiration, and the hope we need to keep stepping when the road ahead feels steep, uncertain, or unimaginably hard.

To run well, we need to run light, refusing to carry unnecessary baggage along the way and intentionally tossing out the unnecessary baggage we’ve accumulated.

We do so by fixing our eyes, or centering our thoughts and affections, on Jesus, the pioneer or leader of our faith. We focus on the One who went before us, endured everything you and I ever will and more, and who, at this moment, sits with His Father, in paradise.

Consider this: Jesus chose the brutality of the cross for the joy set before Him.

While we can’t know for certain what that joy entailed, I believe His joy came from 4 things: He knew His death would bring you and I from death to life and would save us from a life separated from Him. He knew His death and resurrection would break our bondage to sin. He knew it would bridge the gap between us and God, and He knew it would provide a way for us to be reconciled to the Father.

The joy of our salvation reminds us that the pain we experience or watch others experience today won’t last forever.

Another aspect of Jesus’s joy came from knowing He’d faithfully done all God had asked of Him and all He had, in love, determined within Himself to do. Christ had ample opportunities to avoid His death while walking on earth, including when He stood before those able to kill or free Him. He remained silent and embraced His death with determined strength, why? For the joy set before Him.

We can take joy in our faithful obedience as well and in looking forward to the day when we hear from the One who died for us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

~Warmly, Jennifer Slattery