What you’re experiencing right now may not feel light—as the Apostle Paul conveys in his second letter to the church at Corinth—but it is light in comparison to eternity, to everlasting life, to the “eternal weight of glory.”

Life is hard. For some, that sentence isn’t enough. Hard isn’t strong enough, painful enough, agonizing enough. For many, life feels harder than merely hard. It feels excruciating, unbearable, insufferable—and there’s no end in sight.

I’ll be honest: I have had a relatively easy life. I haven’t had many serious health issues (though I dealt with myocarditis back in 2022). So I don’t write this pretending to deal with chronic issues or severe suffering. I don’t write this from extensive experience in the suffering department. But I know what the Bible says about our suffering; I know what Scriptures states about living under horrific pain and tremendous suffering. So do the Puritans.

“The winter prepares the earth for the spring,” Richard Sibbes wrote, “so do afflictions sanctified prepare the soul for glory.”

Your affliction—regardless of its form or intensity—is preparing you for glory. God is using it to sanctify you, to make you more like Jesus. I know we wish that God would normally sanctify us with prosperity and a clean bill of health. I’m sure we wish that the Lord would make us more like Christ through happy moments and carefree times. And I’m sure that happens. But more often than not, we become more like Jesus through pain, suffering, turmoil.

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