The Affliction That Weighs and Passes

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;”

2 Corinthians 4:17

I know calling your pain light seems unfair when you're right in the middle of it, unable to see a way out. The treatment is long, your body hurts more than you'd like to admit, and your spirit grows tired of waiting for relief that's slow to come. It doesn't feel light while you're actually living through it — I understand that better than anyone else ever could.

But I look at your life differently than the clock you use to count the hard days, marking off every week that passes without relief. What feels eternal to you is, in my eternity, fleeting — a blink of an eye compared to what is still to come. And this time of affliction is not being wasted or forgotten by me — it is producing in you something that will weigh far more on the side of glory than it ever weighed on the side of the pain you feel now.

I'm not asking you to pretend it doesn't hurt, or to force a smile in the face of hardship. I'm only asking you to trust that this season has a purpose the pain, on its own, still can't see clearly.