Grasping Eternity

This week I read a number of things that I think ultimately informed what I can only describe as a brief epiphany. In "Approved unto God" Oswald Chambers writes:

God buries His men in the midst of paltry things, no monuments are erected to them, they are ignored, not because they are unworthy but because they are in the place where they cannot be seen. Who could see Paul in Corinth? Paul only became marvellous[sic] after he had gone. All God's men are ordinary men made extraordinary by the matter He has given them. God puts His workers where He puts His Son. This is the age of the humiliation of the saints.

This hits home because of all of the amazing men and women I know and have had the pleasure to know whose names will never be in the papers. Whose sermons won't be sold on iTunes and whose lives will never be recorded in a book. They all deserve such gratitude, I'm surrounded by giants, and yet in this life they won't receive it.

However "this is the age of the humiliation of the saints," and what's to come is the glorification of our Lord in His fullness. And if we've placed ourselves firmly in Him by his grace we stand only to shine with Him. This comforts me as I see great men and women strive and struggle to further God's kingdom with no hope for respite, this is only a passing moment.

And then it hit me while I was in bed the other night, I'm eternal. Not in the sense that God's omnipresence is eternal, I'm a finite being with a beginning point within His creation. But I'm eternal from this point on, for better or for worse.

Thankfully it's by God's good grace that it's for better through the death of His Son, and it's my privilege to join Him in whatever work He calls me to. And that work will last forever.

It changes ones perspective to realize that this short period of misery and humiliation is only to last for the first few seconds of the rest of eternity. It makes the misery a joy and the humiliation a burden for which I am grateful.

Life holds purpose, eternal purpose, and it's in this short span of time that I must work my hardest to ensure that my actions ripple throughout eternity in a way that will affect it for the better. God is good and though I'm undeserving of what I've been given in every way I'm ultimately all the more grateful for it.