“‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;’” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Have you ever been so deep in a mess of your own making that you figured you were just going to have to ride it out and endure it until the end? That’s an awful place to be. Is there anything we can do there other than to simply hang on for dear life? As a matter of fact there is. We can repent.
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“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
What happens when we die? There aren’t many questions that people both don’t want to ask out loud, but about which they are less curious than that one. There are many, many stories about folks who have died, experienced something, and then come back to life vividly remembering what they saw. These can be encouraging, confusing, and just plain wild, but they don’t give us a very firm foundation. What can we actually say with confidence?
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“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
If this world is all there is, there is no reason to endure any amount of chronic suffering, particularly if we don’t have any reasonable expectation that it will end. That’s what we established the first time we examined these words. If this world is all there is, a great deal of what we do becomes meaningless. In fact, all of it does, but the hard stuff in particular. If this world is not all there is, however, everything changes.
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“Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
As I write this, my youngest son has strep throat. He threw up at school yesterday just before it was time to go home. We were able to get him in to see the doc before they closed for the weekend. He threw up again there. And again in the car on the way home. And again before bed. And he fought us to take his medicine. Oh, did he fight us. And then he got us up at 2:30 the following morning for the day. It was a miserable few days. If you are a parent, you likely know exactly what I’m describing. Our bodies are weak things. Some days it feels like they are falling apart faster than others.
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In part three of our series, Finding Wisdom, we took a look at another common area we look to in order to find meaning for our lives. This week, we looked specifically at wisdom itself. Wisdom seems like it should be a good thing, but the harder we pursue it, the more we find that maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Keep reading to see why and what we can do about it.
The Problem with Wisdom
College holds a special place inour cultural narrative. In books,movies, and TV, it is heralded as a time for young people to go off to pursuehigher learning and to grow in wisdom—a journey that cannot be completedwithout a great deal of experience and experimentation. And at one time, that was more true thannot. Universities were generally staffedby men and women who were genuine scholars in their respective fields and werecommitted to shaping young minds with the knowledge and tools they were goingto need in order to find success in whatever field they happened to bepursuing. Over the past generation orso, though, that classical mission has…morphed…somewhat.
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The Nexus 