Looking Beyond What We See

 Yesterday's Sunday morning message challenged us to rethink our attitudes on suffering !

Often we pray to be freed/healed from them when in fact, scripture teaches otherwise!

 ...and then, while I was working on this post up came this post on Ann Voskamp's blog!

Hard Times? How to Hear God's song louder than any hard times!

Look, but look beyond the beauty brimming from the beaming bloom

Look, but look beyond the duty of the modest mop and broom

Look beyond the pond that sparkles like a rhinestone in the sun

Look, but look a little deeper than the sweep of seasons spun

Look, but look beyond the panoramas stirring sacred sighs

Look, but look beyond the frond that lavishes the earth, then dies

Look beyond time’s bitty bubble that does not burst to thin air

Look, but look beyond the trouble to the One who put it there

Look beyond the work that is more than the sweat of toil to sod

Look beyond the hurt that sometimes drains us enough to trust God

Look beyond want’s fondest ‘druthers’ to the Place of faith’s reward

Look, but look beyond the surface to the grace of Christ our Lord

© Janet Martin

  And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 

1 Pet.5:10 

 

 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, 

worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 

2 Cor.4:17

 

 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, 

and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 

Phil.3:10