What You Can Do with Your Stable Life
Hope comes from stability.
2 Corinthians 4 says: 16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 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.
I’ve moved more times than I have fingers and toes. That’s a lot of packing, unpacking, decision making, and instability. One of the insights that this transience has given me is empathy with those who share a higher level of continued displacement.
We all want stability in our lives, but the reality is that it is getting harder and harder. For those that have grown up with a relatively higher level of stability, empathizing with those who are more transient is difficult. It’s out of their understanding, and so trying to bridge the gap between constant movement and stability calls for outside help.
Hope comes from stability. The more grounded you are, the more things become routine, the more opportunity to plan for the future, the more you will find hope. The more unstable you are brings the greater need for something to stabilize you, and often you will take anything at all.
The church has a great opportunity to help people find a sense of stability in Jesus Christ. In the grand scheme of eternity, the pains of this world are “light momentary afflictions”, but as we go through them they don’t seem so light. When we preach of what is to come, and we look forward to something greater, it can start to have an impact on someone’s life. From the relative comfort of our lives, it may not seem like much, but to someone who has moved four times in the past year, the knowledge of Christ and the body of Christ willing to make an investment of friendship to show what that stability can mean, could be the answer they have always needed. Never underestimate what your experiences can mean to the person next to you in the pew or across the table at coffee hour. They might be experiencing more transience than you think.
Perhaps it’s a message that we need to hear as well. The dirty little secret is that we all have a great deal of instability in our lives. We never know what the rest of today will look like, and we don’t have tomorrow guaranteed. Too many times we just don’t acknowledge that reality, which gives God the opportunity to share something great with each of us, and that is the hope in Christ that grounds us in this unstable world. No matter our level of stability or instability, the Gospel of grace reminds us that we are never forgotten, and never far from God’s glory being revealed in us. With every passing day and every missed chance that we regret, God is giving us hope that greater things are always a possibility in this life, and certainly when we see God face-to-face.
So go and show someone hope and show someone stability, even if you don’t think you have it. In Christ, you truly do. Amen.
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