Each day during the month of March we will be sharing a devotional from a booklet written by Steve Love. Steve is a member of Canton First and a Traumatic Brain Injury survivor. If you would like a complete PDF of this devotional, it can be downloaded here.
Day 11
Romans 8:18-21 (New International Version)
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
C. S. Lewis in Perelandra, the second book of the interplanetary adventures of Dr. Ransom, show us what life might have been like if Adam had obeyed God and did not eat the forbid fruit of the tree of Good and Evil. The world which we live in for now is one of imperfection deformed from the original one God created for us. It is because of the fall of man and its consequences that we have illness and disease, among them brain injury. Paul tells us that “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope.”
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” The hardship and suffering of living a life with a brain injury is very real and I do wish I did not have to live it. I wish my car accident never happened. I am now a person with a brain injury, not because I was a bad person and desire it. It is not God’s fault; He did not cause my accident. It is from living in this in perfected deformed world we must live in for now.
Paul tells us that our “present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” He is talking about the life, which is to come, living with God in Heaven. Life there can not be compared to life here. We are told that we will know and be known in Heaven. In this world, in this life, we are restricted by the informative of this world. In the life which lies before us we will be free from those informative. I will not have to live with or use my cane and eye patch in Heaven. I will be free from the restrictions I have to deal with every day because of my brain injury.
What will it be like for us, to see those who are confined to a wheel chair to walk? To talk with one who for now in this world has no ability to speak to us. Look at the problems you for now must deal with everyday in this life. Look at all the aids you must use to try to have a ‘normal life” and think about how they will not have to be used ever again once you are in heaven. When we force our thoughts on the life which wait for us with God in Heaven we have hope and faith to help us to face today. Like Paul we will “consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
Pray and thank God for the life that awaits us with Him in Heaven.
Pray and thank God for His love and the help He gives us to live in this in perfected deformed world.
Pray and ask God to help us to live life forces on the world that awaits us and not just forces on the life we are force to live in this world.