The Wind in the Trees

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.  For our slight, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen, for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. 2 Cor. 4:16-18

In a previous church I pastored, there was an old ornery man who had been abusive to his wife & children. His emotional, verbal and physical abuse had driven the two oldest children from the home. One daughter never had anything to do with him again after he hit her in the face. The two younger children went with their mother when the inevitable separation happened.

By the time I knew him, he had had a stroke and lived in a farmhouse all by himself. He spent almost all his life in a LazyBoy electronic chair that would lift him forward so he could get out. He could then hobble haltingly on one crutch to the bathroom or the kitchen to open a can of beans or microwave a frozen dinner.

I didn’t like visiting him. Even with homecare, the house was filthy and depressing. His attitude was worse—negative, always complaining, angry, harsh.

Even though they were separated, he and his wife continued to go to our church. She was as sweet a person as you could meet. Yet he ran her down continually, always telling me how badly she’d treated him. He couldn’t understand why she’d left him and why she wouldn’t come back.

He was an incredibly stubborn and determined man. Of course, he no longer had a driver’s license, yet every Sunday he would somehow wrestle himself out of his chair, out of the house and onto his John Deere. He would then drive along side the country roads for five miles to our church.

Then, he had his second stroke which left him utterly helpless. There was no choice now but to leave the farmhouse and move to a nursing home for 24-hour care. Despite all the strength of his once indomitable will, now he could not even roll over in bed by himself. His life for all intents and purposes was completely useless. 

And yet, something wonderful happened. Somehow, deep down in the innermost part of this grizzled old farmer, God did a miracle.

The passage above said our slight, momentary affliction is producing something–glory. Sometimes we can see that glory before our eyes. I saw it in this broken old man. Out of the heart that once spewed out anger and criticism, gentleness and sweetness now flowed. His wife saw it. I saw it and we both enjoyed visiting him from then on. 

Sometimes when we see someone make a breakthrough at the end of their life, we are tempted to think, “What a shame! He’s so old and feeble he can’t do anything. If only he’d learned sooner!” And those would be valid sentiments if this life was our focus. 

But the passage above also says, “We don’t look at what is seen but at what can’t be seen.” We don’t focus on this life because we’re made for another kind of life and no matter how long it takes, if we finally learn to love, we’re ready for it. 

Paul Billheimer writes, 

When one has learned love, he has succeeded in life no matter how often he has failed otherwise.  If all the failures in learning love in the past have at last produced this brokenness of spirit, that life has been no failure in God’s sight because it was for this He was working.”

On the other hand,

“The person who has made the most spectacular success, but who reaches life’s end without learning love has totally failed.”

The Bible puts it this way, “If I speak with the tongues of men or of angels, reveal all mysteries, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, I’m bankrupt without love.”¹

1. 1 Cor. 13 ↩︎