Our expectations can set us up for pleasant surprises or huge disappointments. What are your expectations for life on planet Earth? If you look to things on earth to make you happy, you’re setting yourself up for huge disappointments. If you expect hardship and difficulty, you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised at times.
Christian thinker and writer C. S. Lewis once wrote, “If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.”
This world isn’t heaven. It won’t last forever. It’s groaning in pain and passing away. Remembering that keeps us from becoming discouraged when it’s hard.
And yet, there are also those moments of great joy and blessing. God doesn’t owe them to us, but they’re little reminders that he’s still crazy about us and longs to give us good things. When we experience those moments on planet Earth, it’s not so bad.
In the meantime, God’s training us. He’s building us up and getting us ready. This world is passing away, but we’re preparing for a better one. A perfect one. A heavenly one. That makes going through present trials worth it. That gives strength while we persevere and wait. That makes us say, “It’s not so bad.”
“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
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