Spritz and I took a Friday evening walk along Coffee Pot Bayou to visit my favorite tree that blooms at the end of each winter. Although this year it feels like we’ve jumped straight to summer, the buds and blossoms remind me that spring is coming nonetheless. It was an idyllic night; the sun was warming my skin and the still waters of the Bay perfectly mirrored the cerulean sky and cumulus clouds. For a moment, it felt like perfection. Until the nagging ache in my neck seemed to amplify with each step.
Spritz was tugging the leash in excitement, as my gaze took in the glimmers of splendor all around me. I was—as I have been so many times—in a place of beholding both beauty and pain. And suddenly I was hit with an overwhelming thought: When I walk the golden streets of paradise, I will walk them pain-free. But even more striking was the image that each perfect and effortless stride—for all of eternity—will be that much more of a miracle because of the agony I’ve endured.
It’s so easy to view pain as a curse, even when I see first-hand all the good that has come from it. But in that moment, as my eyes welled with tears, I was overcome by the kindness of God to have filled me with such hope and assurance, and I whispered a quiet thank you.
I once heard the late Timothy Keller say that in heaven, everything sad will be made untrue. And that the truth will be so much better because of the opposite of it we’ve faced here on earth. He went on to give an analogy of having a terrible dream early one morning that his wife had died. And when he awoke and found her sleeping in the bed next to him, his excitement at her presence and love for her was amplified that much more because the dream was not true.
Our lives are a mere dot in the scope of forever, and knowing that the absence of my afflictions—for all eternity—will be that much sweeter changes my perspective of the pain I face today.
“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Colossians 3:2 CSB
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