We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves…That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. 2 Corinthians 4:7,16

 

Our world holds two strange realities which shape our lives. Every day there is birth and new life. And yet, we see daily decay and death at work.

 

Each of us lives pressed between the hope and celebration of new life and the mourning of loss. One family celebrated the birth of a new baby on the very same day their grandmother, matriarch of their family, passed away. It was impossible to know whether to laugh or weep as two of the strongest emotions, joy and grief, battled within them, side by side.

 

The Bible talks about this great juxtaposition of life and death around us. It tells us in the book of 2 Corinthians, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves…That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day” (2 Corinthians 4:7-8).

 

When you follow Jesus, you have a unique, eternal hope that embraces the joy that even when everything in this world is imperfect and passing away, we live for an unseen eternal kingdom that will never pass away. Even though bodies get older and frailer, our minds feebler, our spirits are becoming ever more like Jesus and getting closer to final perfection in His presence.

 

Like the family stuck between laughter and tears, birth and death, we live in tension. But it is a tension that pushes us to hold even tighter to our hope. And that hope places all our dreams and longings, everything we’re living for, in God.