For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waitheth for him.–Isaiah 64:4
We tend to worry too much about the end of our life on earth. We are prone to forget that, for the Christian, the best is yet to come! Actually the end is just the beginning. Greg Laurie gives us this reminder:
Heaven is the opportunity to develop and fulfill dreams bigger than anything on this earth. If we did not accomplish something on earth, it still can be accomplished later.
This is important to realize, because there are those who have very difficult lives. There are those whose lives were cut short. I can’t think of anything more sad than when a child dies or when a young man or woman leaves us in what we perceive to be before their time.
But God promises to compensate. God promises to make it up to them. Death for the Christian is not the end of life, but it is the continuation of it in another place.
We will be better off eternally because we suffered temporarily. I think of the here and now, but God thinks of the by-and-by. I think of the temporal, but God thinks of the eternal. I think about what makes me happy, but God thinks about what will make me holy. He looks at the big picture.
So in this plan and purpose of God’s, there may be things I have gone through that make no sense to me now. But when I get to heaven, I will realize that I was a better person for them. I will see that I was made more into the image of Jesus Christ as a result of them. I will discover that new ministry opportunities opened up that I would not have had otherwise because of these things.
There will be something about them that causes me to look back and say, “Now I understand why God allowed that to happen to me.” So it all will be sorted out. And I think this argument for the greater good may be the strongest biblical case for why God allows suffering.
