Growing Through Suffering预览

Making Everything Right

Do you ever wish that God would just make everything “right”?

We are all too familiar with the effects of creation being subjected to God’s curse (Romans 8:20-22). God has “planted eternity” in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), giving us a unique awareness that we are made for far more than this world (Romans 8:23).

Sin and suffering increase our anticipation for the fulfillment of God’s promise to redeem all things. His unstoppable mission is to restore the entirety of creation to a state of eternal perfection, in which the blight and burden of suffering will be forever eliminated. What we suffer now—no matter how painful, intense, or chronic—is still “nothing” (Romans 8:18) compared to the glory that will be revealed.

The new creation will contain no more hate, prejudice, discrimination, poverty, or unmet needs. There will be no more physical or spiritual blindness, deafness, lameness, or muteness. Gladness and joy will overtake us. Sorrow and sighing will flee. There will be no more fear; no more anxiety, depression, or loneliness; no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. We will sparkle in God’s hand like jewels in a crown, attractive and beautiful. We will know perfect peace, untainted joy, loving relationships with God and others, and eternal pleasures at his right hand.

Perhaps most sweetly, God will minister to each of us individually (1 Peter 5:10). He will bind up our bruises and heal our wounds (Psalm 147:3). He will lead us to the springs of living water (Revelation 7:17). He will wipe every tear from our eyes (Revelation 21:3-4). In an instant, we will realize that he sees and has always seen. He hears and has always heard. He cares and has always walked with us, even during our darkest days when we were not able to sense his presence.

As long as we walk this earth, we will continue to “groan and sigh,” wanting our dying bodies to be “swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:4). While it can be a challenge at times to wait patiently and confidently for the world to come, we hold on, by faith, to the hope that God will fulfill his promise to make and keep everything right—forever.