By Mary Carothers

It was a bad dream. I dreamed one of my children was severely injured and I was terribly distressed. As I was on my knees, crying out to God in despair, I began to wake up. The Lord began to teach me something, but it didn’t make much sense to me.

You see, you’re awake now… you’re no longer dreaming. Now is reality, that was only a dream. All the agony and despair you felt in the dream was very real to you. Yet, now you can see that it was only a dream, it has passed away. Although you felt it keenly, it was a passing thing. It didn’t last.

I wondered what God was trying to teach me. The next day He quickened the last two verses in Romans 8, where Paul speaks of the absolute impossibility of anything ever separating us from God’s love. Especially meaningful were the words “neither life nor death”. But I couldn’t see any connection.

A few days later I was reading Psalm 139. When I came to verse 18, and read: When I awake, I am still with you, a “light” went on inside. Another translation seemed even more anointed: Were I to come to the end… I would still be with thee.  Then the Lord began to minister to me that when we die and enter eternity, (that is, when we “awake” to the reality of eternity) we will still be with Him. We sometimes think of physical death as the end of life. In reality, it is the beginning – of eternity.

What the Lord was patiently trying to teach me is that this life will seem to have been a dream when we enter eternity and behold Him. Then the heartaches and tragedies of this life will be seen in a different light, and we will say with Isaiah: Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. We will see the sufferings of this life as Paul did when he said they are not even worth comparing to the glory that is coming (see Romans 8:18).

God isn’t trying to tell us we shouldn’t experience grief or pain or disappointment, but that with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can see our circumstances in a different perspective. When we praise the Lord, expressing our faith in Him, our circumstances lose their power to crush us. Instead, through praise, they can become a “springboard” to a closer walk with Jesus.

Are you experiencing anguish and sorrow? As you pray about your problem, ask God to help you to see it from His point of view, from the perspective of eternity. As you steadfastly praise Him for the situation, it will lose its power to destroy you. Instead, you will be on your way to becoming an overcomer (see Romans 8:37). (Reprint from April 2002)