Have You Seen This?

In my late 30s, I attended a funeral for my friend’s daughter, Carolyn. Carolyn was just a few years older than me with a young child. Her funeral left a marked impression. I was a mother and had children of similar age. I watched my friend grieve for her daughter and her grandchild! I also watched my friend live striving to aid a motherless grandchild, but also, walk on in faith the rest of her days.

Words at Carolyn’s funeral have stuck in my heart and brain all these years. 

To this day, they still bring me lots of contemplation and comfort.

If you ponder them and try to ingest the meaning, it may captivate you for the rest of your life too!

The Words:

“While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 
(2 Corinthians 4:18)

Everything I see with my eyes is temporal, temporary! 

That is so far from the reality I live. I think … what I see is permanent, because it’s all I know. I see, feel, touch, hear, taste, experience it … it’s very real to me.

What this verse is telling me is, there is something REAL-ER! Beyond my sight!

There are things that are eternal. They never pass away … they last forever!

And guess what, I can’t SEE anything that’s eternal … YET!

The Pastor at Carolyn’s funeral said, (as I recall):

“We will not see Carolyn anymore. She won’t be at family functions. She won’t call on the phone. We can’t hug or share experiences. But don’t be mistaken. Just because we won’t see her, doesn’t mean she’s not living anymore. It means we are temporal; she is now eternal. We are the ones that will end. She will never end … she is eternal!”

Don’t trust your eyes (he inferred). They don’t tell the truth. Everything you see is temporary … it will decay, decompose, and at some point, be no longer. What you CAN’T see will last forever!

This little verse and its meaning has permeated my heart! I can’t even explain to you how often it’s replayed in my heart and mind … billions of times! It has comforted me in many many ways, not just at deaths and funerals.

My eyes do not tell the REAL story, OR the whole story.

There is so much beyond what I can see!

Dwight L. Moody, an American Evangelist, 1837-1899, spoke these compelling words:

“Some day you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody of East Northfield is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal—a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body.” 

He surely believed the verse we are talking about!

Do a little experiment this week … when you are looking at your house, nature, family … whatever you are looking at, pause for a minute and tell yourself “This is temporal!” 

Remind yourself:

“The eternal things … I can’t see!”

“The eternal things are hidden from my sight.”

“Just because I can’t SEE them does not mean they aren’t real!”

I think you’ll find as I have, your perspective will change, even more as time goes on and this verse sinks into your core.

In our temporal world, it takes faith to believe this, because we can’t SEE it, or experience it yet. But, when we take up residence in our eternal body, our faith will become sight! Then we will SEE it … forever!  (2 Corinthians 5)

Currently Temporal,

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