1 Corinthians 15:35-58
Today's Scripture

Sometimes being a diabetic is really a pain. Today I had to have blood drawn for my seasonal A1c test to see how my blood sugar's been doing for the past three months. Needle poke in the arm. The tearing of the bandage when it comes off my arm where the needle found the vein. The daily discomfort of poking my finger to check my blood, not to mention the shots--four a day--and the weird feelings and tinglings that go with high or low blood sugar.

This is really nothing, I know, compared to what some people deal with. Yesterday I was helping an elderly aunt of my husband's. Her husband, Tim's uncle (Uncle Danny), was helping her walk, too, but she really needed support on eachside. Danny was at the office where I'm working during tax season--the business Danny's now retired from but still dabbles in. Anyway, Aunt Jeannie needed help getting down the long hallway to the ladies room. At every step she gasped or moaned a bit. Just last week she was in the hospital to have a kidney stone blasted. Ouch.

So, when I read 1 Corinthians 15 and hear about the new bodies we will have in heaven, I can't help but be hopeful. We will have new, spiritual bodies in heaven. We will be like Jesus! We will be changed, and death will be swallowed up in victory!

How wonderful this message is to all of us who believe, and how comforting as we say good-bye to believers who may have lived their last days in pain. In heaven, they are victorious--and we will be too. Paul speaks of how our pain here on earth will be nothing compared to the wonder and joy in heaven. In Romans 8:18-25 he writes:

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that^[i] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (NIV)

Because he lives, we shall live, too. May our daily aches and pains be reminders that one day God will bring us into his glory, where tears and suffering will cease.



- posted by Suzi @ 10:28 AM