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Living in Light of Eternity
What good is future glory in my present pain?

by Paula Rinehart Issue #136 July/August 2003

Seasickness, I'd always heard, is about as sick as you can get. I thought that claim to be wildly exaggerated until I found myself gripping the rail of a fishing boat caught in rolling seas off the coast of Malaysia. With a flash of insight, I got the picture: This was seasickness. I was hopelessly ill among people who had no remedy for this malaise...and no English to tell me even if they had one. As a woman raised in the mountains and ignorant of the ways of the sea, I was at a loss, save the one instinct to cling to the rail for dear life. Finally, my eyes found the horizon...a thin strip of gray that split the sea from the sky. Wonder of wonders, in a scene of sickening motion this line remained fixed. As I glued my eyes to that horizon, the riot inside me began to quiet down. I discovered this remedy to be, in fact, my only hope. There was one still point in the universe, and my job was to keep my eyes fixed squarely upon it.

Heaven on the Horizon

I spent a couple of hours staring at that horizon. At one point it struck me: This horizon is like heaven. From somewhere in my head, the words of Peter floated forward. "Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ," Peter wrote to struggling Christians of his day (1 Pet. 1:13, NASB). I stumbled onto a truth in those moments of seasickness that needed to be much more central in my spiritual life. These notions of heaven and eternity are not mere esoteric afterthoughts to sweeten the gospel package; they are the unmovable horizon that is meant to steer our course and still our souls. Eternity cannot be a high–minded abstraction while my actual focus is getting God to come through for me in the here and now. Rather, eternity is the frame around the picture of a life that simply will not make sense without it.

As I've explored these ideas further, Peter has been my guide into making eternity real...a quiet, flowing wellspring that continually refreshes from within.

Bad Timing

Nearly everything Peter writes is threaded with the golden strands of heaven and the hope of experiencing God's glory. It was as real to him, I'm convinced, as the air he breathed moment by moment. He can hardly express a thought for which eternity is not the backdrop.

I find it ironic that Peter, of all the disciples of Jesus, would be the one to write so much on heaven. An honest look at the Peter–of–the–gospels reveals a man with a very human mix of profound insight and stunning cluelessness, of heroic strength and almost naive weakness in the face of danger. Peter was the one to ask Jesus what kind of reward would come to His followers who had left everything to follow Him. This was about as close as you can get to saying, "What's in it for me?" Yet Jesus did not rebuke Peter. Rather, He described the distant horizon, which held a job description beyond anything Peter had yet imagined (Mt. 19:27–30). Jesus spoke directly to Peter's longing for a future reward.

Peter's biggest problem seemed to be his sense of timing. While he was the only disciple to recognize clearly that Jesus was the Messiah (Mt. 16:13–20), he expected Christ to establish His kingdom now...and make Peter His right–hand man. Jesus told him in the plainest of terms that the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be killed. But Peter would have none of it. Present–tense suffering and future–tense glory were not part of his vision. Peter's immediate response was "Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you!" (Mt. 16:21–22).

Jesus zeroed in on the root of Peter's confusion: "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men" (v. 23). Heaven was anything but the horizon Peter's eyes were fixed upon. How, then, did this earth–bound disciple later write such heaven–focused letters to his fellow Christians?

I can see clearly now.

If you leave the gospels and move on to observe Peter in Acts, you'll see a man fearless before his accusers and grateful after a flogging that he could suffer shame for the name of Christ. If you couple this picture with Peter's own words from his first letter...where he begins and ends on the theme of this inheritance, this glory that is reserved in heaven for us, imperishable and undefiled...you have to marvel at the change in this man. Clearly, scales fell from his eyes.

John records what may have been the pivotal point in Peter's life. The risen Jesus came to his neighborhood and to his fishing boat, where Peter had returned in the wake of his utter defeat. For though Peter had vowed to defend Jesus to the death, a mere servant girl and two unnamed, ordinary citizens were all it took to intimidate him into claiming that he never knew Jesus. Drawn to the heroic, Peter had gotten a dose of his own cowardice.

Jesus reentered Peter's life in this place of shame and defeat. In His risen glory, He fixed breakfast for Peter and the rest of the disciples by the Sea of Galilee. Peter knew he had no right to expect anything from Christ...not His welcome or His forgiveness, and certainly not a place in the coming kingdom. Peter, for once, knew he had not a leg to stand on.

In a stunning twist of grace, the kind you never expect in a place of shame, Jesus gave Peter his old job back...all the promise of being a "rock," of future glory, of caring for the people of God. "Shepherd my sheep," Jesus said (Jn. 21:16, NASB). In the great feast of the goodness of God that we find hard to believe, Jesus told Peter that he had kept his place at the table. It was still there for him...all the more so, really, as Peter finally understood his dependency and need.

The story of Peter's life from this point becomes the tale of a person who recovers from his seasickness by finding the horizon. The thin, gray line that does not move in a world where everything is uncertain is the hope of experiencing the glory of God...undeserved and waiting there, unchangeable. It was from the vantage point of that unmoving horizon that Peter could write,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.

...1 Pet. 1:3–4, NASB

A Taste of Suffering

There is something else Peter learned from the Jesus' resurrection. He learned that suffering and glory were two sides of a coin, inseparable in Christ's kingdom. At last, he saw clearly what Jesus had tried to teach him as they walked dusty roads together: The Messiah had not yet come to reign in glory; He had come first to suffer. Only when the suffering was complete would the glory be revealed. Jesus even personalized the message for Peter. Someday, He explained, when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone will bring you where you do not wish to go. This told Peter that he would die a martyr's death (Jn. 21:18–19).

The eternal glory and the present pain go together. This time, Peter understood. He took to heart the job that Jesus gave him...again...by the Sea of Galilee, that of shepherding His sheep. He gave the rest of his life to establishing churches throughout Asia Minor, logging more than 3,000 miles on foot, telling people that their long–awaited Messiah was the Savior who suffered for them.

After years in Asia Minor, Peter returned to Rome right before Nero became emperor. For 10 years, Peter encouraged Christians suffering under the reign of a madman who lit his garden parties with the Christians he set on fire. Peter himself is said to have died at Nero's hands, crucified upside down at his own request, for he felt unworthy to die just as Jesus had.

Asia Minor became the Christian corner of the Roman Empire...so much so that as Ignatius was led on the long path to Rome to be thrown to the lions, throngs of Christians lined the road shouting encouragement and asking for his blessing. They were the men and women Peter had preached to, the sheep he had shepherded.

An Eternity of Glory

Peter's life and message give me immense hope. His words are purchased through the fire of failure, which has, at times, singed me as well. When it comes to heaven's hope, Peter was a slow learner. He craved an immediate reward long before he came to fix his hope on heaven. He was determined to get Jesus to be the king he wanted now because he could not see clearly the glory of then. And we are the beneficiaries of Peter's learning curve. When Peter writes about fixing our eyes on the hope of Jesus' return, we know to pay attention.

I study the transformation in this man who found the horizon of true hope and set the world on fire for God, and I am filled with the longing to be found as faithful to the small, quiet commission God has given me. Peter's words make me want to squirm less beneath the minor hardships my own walk with God brings. I grow closer to accepting that present suffering of some sort is inevitably stapled to the hope of eternal glory. Peter's words filter through my consciousness, encouraging me across the centuries:

After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.

...1 Pet. 5:10, NASB, emphasis mine

In the middle of the storm of life, when everything inside feels sick and unsettled, I want my eyes glued to the horizon...to a glory more certain than the sun.

About the author:

Paula Rinehart is the author of Strong Women, Soft Hearts (W Publishing) and The Death of Romance (Zondervan, January 2004). When she and her friends get together, they like to put their feet on the coffee table, drink chai, and talk.

On Your Own:

Taking Hold of Our Hope

1. This article describes Peter's journey from being a man consumed with the here–and–now to being someone whose life was rooted in the hope of heaven. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you describe the focus of your life right now (with 1 being completely absorbed with life here and 10 being a burning longing for heaven)?

2. What circumstances, struggles, or habits cause you to lose focus on the "horizon line" of heaven? Here are some examples: a painful trial, struggle with sin, excessive busyness, relational conflicts, doubts about your faith. Identify as many factors as you can.

3. Choose one of your answers from above. Pause to confess how this issue keeps you from focusing on the hope of heaven. For example, you might pray, "Father, I'm sorry that the stress of my job regularly prevents me from thinking about my hope in You." After you've prayed, ask God to help you identify one practical change you can make to keep the hope of heaven in focus, and then wait for His response.

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