Blessings Stored for the Hardships Endured

“You have kept count of my tossings;

put my tears in your bottle.

Are they not in your record?”

— Psalm 56:8 (NRSV)

We may wonder what is truly of personal value in the eternal realm. We may wonder if what we value in this life lines up with what God values in the next life. And if we are given to many tears, we may ask, legitimately so, what may become of them; what legacy for our anguish?

How might there be reward for suffering? Our faith holds us steadier when we imagine God crowning us in glory with rewards of abundance so glorious we cannot fathom them either here or there.

We may wonder, as God saves up our ‘tears in a bottle’ what that receptacle might look like. Is it like a parent keeping a collage of a child’s artwork on the refrigerator door, before they carefully scrapbook it for a prosperity? Or perhaps God is collecting these tears, all our notes of surrender, and all our meek overtures of submission of spirit, so his Spirit would have its way.

Maybe each emotion, and each resonance of distress, has its own DNA, and together God is making a grand potion for our eternal healing. Could it be that God has written this scroll containing all our deeds and misdeeds, all our ecstasies and pains, and is saving it for that day when we make our approach and enter the gates of Zion?

The Purpose of Such a Hope

God is a thoroughly good God.

For this reason, needing no other reason, we have faith in a Blessed Hope: Jesus. Our Lord, Saviour and King is making for us our eternal home, even if that destination is eternal and unchangeable. Having such a hope gratifies our nature toward the living of life here and now.

With such a hope we have reason to endure the hardships, trials, sorrows, and persecutions; we endure them with regal ardour.

Such a hope will never disappoint us, though some would laugh at us for such a hope. But these people would not laugh if they saw what hope does; what it truly does. It is the elixir for life.

Every grating pain, every silent tear, and every groaning whimper; God has a record of every one of these notations of faithfulness that caused us to bear up whilst not giving up.

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We store up our blessings by the hardships we endure. By these torments we bear we have meaning and purpose for life because of the strength in God to sustain us. Even when life can seem so sadistically cruel we can have faith sufficient to keep going. Such faith can never be wrong. God is with us.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.