But For a Moment
August 31, 2023
My husband retired just over a year ago. When I talk to him about work and something that is particularly stressful or irritating, he often comments, “I am glad I don’t have to deal with that anymore.” He remembers what it was like to have to deal with unrealistic workloads and deadlines. But now he is retired, and those stressors are no longer his problem. While it might seem like he is rubbing it in (he is retired and I am not), what it really does for me is put the situation into perspective. In just a few short years, this won’t be an issue for me either.
Perspective is defined as a particular attitude toward or way of regarding or thinking about something, a point of view. Perspective is what makes older people seem wise. When my staff are anxious about something, I will sometimes tell them that next year we will laugh about this. Perspective is a valuable commodity. It allows us to step back, take a breath, and view this situation in the big picture of a month, a year, a decade, or maybe even a lifetime.
The Apostle Paul wrote about perspective in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.
16 That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. 17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. (NLT)
The “that” Paul mentions is found in verse 14: We know that God, who raised the Lord Jesus, will also raise us with Jesus and present us to himself together with you.
Paul’s present troubles, at the time he wrote the second letter to the Corinthians, were significant and life-threatening. He had been beaten, hunted down, jailed, stoned, and condemned to death for his life’s work of preaching the gospel. But he refers to them as small and tells us that they won’t last long. Don’t look at the trouble, he tells us, but fix your eyes on the big picture and on the things of the spirit, on the things that are everlasting. He repeats this advice in Philippians 4:8. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Focus on the good, because the bad won’t last long - in the big picture.
As a mother and grandmother, I have a role to play in how my children and grandchildren see the world and their experience of it. Young people need perspective today, like they have never needed it before. They need to know that they will survive today’s challenge. They need my listening ear and my encouragement. I must bite my tongue when I am about to launch into the when-I-was-a-kid story. If what I am about to say will get an eyeroll, maybe I shouldn’t say it.
My challenge is to be present with them and help them sort out the problems they are facing in TODAY’s world. Not in a judgmental suck-it-up-Buttercup way, but in a way that shows I am confident they can get through this. If I practice perspective and practice focusing on the good in my own life, I will be ready to lead them to understand that this problem is truly “but for a moment.”