Be encouraged!
Come with me to the Gospel of John 6. Jesus had just fed around 15-20k people with five loaves and two fish. The crowd is satisfied having feasted on more than they could eat. Jesus knows that the next day they will be hungry again and says the following to them: ” Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him”. At the end of the discourse Jesus says to the crowd: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst”.
At every level, financial, leisure, sport, fitness etc, the world out there is labouring for the food that perishes, and if we are not very careful, we will be sucked into that stream of endless discontentment. The apostle Paul who was very well qualified and highly esteemed in terms of the world’s standards, says to young Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:6 “Godliness with contentment is great gain” and to the Church at Corinth he says in 2 Corinthians 4:18 “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, [the food that perishes] but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”.
Over the years I have come to see this as a distinctive in the lives of Christians who are maturing and growing in their faith and trust in God. As much as they are enjoying all the good things that this life offers they know that it is all transient, so their eyes are more and more fixed on what is unseen; the eternal!! It reminds me of the chorus we all love to sing: Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of the earth will grow strangely dim,in the light of His glory and grace.
With Christian love,
Anton van Stormbroek