It comes at all you from all sides on a Monday, doesn't it?Well, I guess it comes at you from all sides just about any day of the week. But yesterday was a particularly tough day -- sidewalk counseling outside that trashy Bellevue abortion clinic of Leroy Carhart's; fighting the indifference of 9 clients and at least as many abortion workers; fighting too against wind gusts of up to 4o miles an hour; trying to help my Mom deal with the anxieties from her first night on a C-PAP breathing machine; takling to a young single mother whose doubts about religious matters had reached a crisis point; and a few other problems.
Oh yeah, there was also an intervention with two aggressive and dangerous thugs who were running a door-to-door scam in our neighborhood. Fortunately, I was here to defend Claire, get the goods on the game they were running and eventually get the police after the bad guys.
Whew. It was sure enough for me to fall back on the visionary truth spoken by the apostle Paul in I Cornthians 4:17 and 18, "For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
You know, in the flower power days of my youth, we used to describe things that were deeply meaningful and profound as "heavy." As in, "Whoa, man! Can you dig those really heavy Buffalo Springfield lyrics!"
Well, the Greek word translated "weight" in the above verse is one whose strict translation would be "heavy." It suggests something solid, sure, lasting -- something that's a strong contrast to things that are light, ethereal and easily blown away.
It's as if Paul knew exactly how we would use the word "heavy" in the 1960s. "Brother, you're gonna' have trouble in your life. There's a whole lot of anguish and trials and sin and enemy actions you'll be called to encounter. But, trust me. As one who has known plenty of that kind of trouble, I can testify with authority that all of 'em put together are light and momentary when compared to the truly heavy thing -- and that heavy thing is the heavenly inheritance that awaits you on the other side. So, dude; don't give up. Don't get distracted. And don't let your joy, your confidence or your duty get lost in sweating the small stuff. Concentrate instead on making that 'heavy' reward heavier still by faithfully following Jesus, your Savior."
Yeah, okay; maybe Paul wouldn't have put it exactly that way. But you get the point; namely, that even Mondays like yesterday with all their "momentary, light affliction" cannot even compare with the glory of the "heavy" prize which is ours.
