Depending on our particular situation, we can probably relate to Paul’s reminder that the “outer self is wasting away” and that “the tent that is our earthly home [may be] destroyed.” And we, like Paul, sometimes “groan” while we “are still in this tent.”
We feel the effects of aging, we get bad results from an MRI, we hear the news of a good friend’s death . . . and we’re reminded again about the brevity of this life as it is now.
But Paul helps us to focus on the fact that we don’t need to “lose heart,” because we “have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” We “walk by faith, not by sight.”
Tomorrow we plan to study this text and reflect on how important it is for Christians to have an eternal focus. God wants us to remember that our hopes and dreams aren’t tied up in health and wealth here . . . that we were created for a different kind of world. We can look forward to what will happen when this sin-cursed world is gone and we live eternally with God in the new heavens and new earth when “what is mortal is swallowed up by life.”
“So we do not lose heart . . . So we are always of good courage. . . . Yes, we are of good courage.”
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