From 2 Cor. 4:16-18:
“Therefore, we do not lose heart. 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 eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Such beautiful prose, and so full of fruit to pick. I fret a lot over “light and momentary troubles.” When they are happening to me they rarely seem either “light” or “momentary,” yet they are almost always revealed as such in retrospect. That is perhaps part of the human condition. But the phrase that jumps out today is that admonition to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.” That almost seems impossible, doesn’t it — to “fix our eyes…on what is unseen,” but then I am reminded of that gaze we are all capable of, where we are looking at everything, yet looking at nothing in particular – often referred to as an “empty gaze” or “staring into space.” Paul is, I think, calling on us to take it all in lest we fail to recognize the “unseen” and “eternal” that is right there in front of us.
It occurs to me... 