Looking at What You Cannot See

How do you look at what you cannot see?

I was taking a walk late Sunday afternoon, clear up the hill to where I could get a good look at this windmill.

And of course, I was looking.

And I was seeing.

And taking pictures of everything from windmill to weed. 

I was celebrating having a camera again after being without one for a week.

My old one gave up the ghost and died. 

Paul writes in I Corinthians 4:18, "We do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen."

What did he mean?

He said this right in the middle of talking about suffering and afflictions,

and about not losing heart.

It is easy to lose heart--when things go wrong,

when our dreams evaporate,

when our plans and hopes are in ashes, 

when we are gossiped about and criticized wrongfully or rightfully,

when storms howl in and physical problems hit us,

when disaster happens,

when the car lands in the ditch. 

(I got this snap just before we whizzed by on the road coming home from church.)

I read a quote from John Piper about looking at what we cannot see.

It meant so much to me. He wrote, in not the greatest English but it was too good to not pass on:

"That is the unseen you got to look at.

One more thing, so relevant for so many suffering people and so precious to me. This word in verse 17 “preparing.” Not only is all your affliction momentary, not only is all your affliction light in comparison to eternity and the glory there, but all of it is totally meaningful.

 Now that is a very controversial statement because of how much insane suffering there is in the world.
Every time something horrific happens an interviewer will say: Meaningless. And that is what it looks like. It is everywhere. Now we have got the Internet, we have no excuse for not crying every day. Weep with those who weep, right?

This text says: Our light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight. It doesn’t say “will be followed by” an eternal weight of glory. That would be good enough... That is not what it says. The Greek word means produce, prepare, cause to bring about.
I will venture this. Every millisecond of your pain from the fallen nature or fallen man, every millisecond of your misery, in the path of obedience, is producing a peculiar glory [italics mine]you will get because of that.

 

John Piper goes on: "That is a very controversial statement and I will believe it. So that if anybody says to me that a believer’s suffering was meaningless, I will be quiet, probably, because they are probably hurting really bad right now. I am going to wait and see when the right time is, but I am going to come back eventually and say: It wasn’t meaningless. I don’t care if it was cancer or criticism. I don’t care if it was slander or sickness. It wasn’t meaningless, because verse 17 says: My light, momentary, life long, total affliction is doing something. It is doing something. It is not meaningless.

Of course you can’t see what it is doing.

This is the main unseen thing verse 18 is talking about. What is the unseen you are supposed to look at? You are supposed to look at the promise of God [italics mine] in verse 17 that says: Your pain is doing something for you. You can’t see it. You can’t feel it. Either you see it with the eyes of faith, believe it, because the text says it, or you lose heart."

"Every millisecond of your misery, in the path of obedience, is producing a peculiar glory."

And there is the secret. "In the path of obedience."

As a friend said once, "We cannot control outcomes."

We can only choose obedience.

And we have to leave the outcomes, and the things we cannot see, to God, trusting in what else we cannot see: His promises!