Hey there,
A couple of years ago, the microwave above our stove broke.
I did what I typically do when something breaks... ignore it and hope someone else (aka Matt) gets to it first.
You know how some tasks you delay for days end up only taking five minutes? Not this one. This was not your typical just-buy-a-new-one-and-slide-it-in situation. The specific size was no longer manufactured, and anything else would either be too big or leave gaping holes on either side.
We hummed and hawed over the whole situation until we found ourselves standing there with a designer, ready to draw up plans to remodel the entire kitchen.
Well. That escalated quickly.
It's wild how quickly something relatively small can convince you that everything needs to change. Maybe it's one meltdown in the store or a kid waking up multiple nights in a row, and suddenly we feel like our whole foundation is crumbling. A hard day spirals into, "I'm failing at everything." I am so guilty of this. It is so easy for me to believe that this hard moment, this feeling, this struggle will define my life forever.
But that voice (the one telling us everything is falling apart) does not come from God. His voice is steady, gentle, and often hard to hear beneath the noise listing all the ways we are falling short.
"Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." -- 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
I love how it says "wasting away," or in another version, "our physical body is becoming older and weaker" (that tracks). After multiple nights of no sleep, it can genuinely feel like my body is decaying.
But this passage reminds us that it's not about how bright-eyed and bushy-tailed we feel. Inwardly, we are being renewed. Those light and momentary troubles are not here to convince us we need to renovate the whole house. They are reminders that God is at work in it all and through it all.
This email might just be for me. Maybe I'm the only one who starts drafting blueprints for a total life overhaul after a hard week. But in case anyone else feels the same, maybe today we can pause before calling the contractor. Maybe we can fix our eyes not on what feels urgent and visible in front of us, but on the unseen and eternal work God is doing, even here.