Shifting our view on suffering.

God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that He was willing to take it on Himself.

— Timothy Keller (@timkellernyc) February 28, 2016

So true! When we look at the here and now - at the situation in the present - it is so easy to take our eyes off God and to think Him unfair or even cruel for allowing us to suffer or experience the pain we find ourselves in.

At those times though, we need to stop, we need to step back and look at our suffering with an eternal perspective. Because with the view of eternity we see two main things.  We look back and see that God's love for us is unmeasurably, overwhelmingly great.  Because when we look back we see the cost Jesus paid so that we might live - we see what He suffered because he took the punishment for sin upon Himself on the cross.  The second thing we see is the final result for us of Jesus' acts on the cross.  We look forward to peace, we look forward to glory and we see ourselves in the future place, doing what we were created to do... praising God.

With those two things as an eternal backdrop, we can take on a completely different perspective to the misery and suffering we are experiencing in the moment.