Why the Best Is Yet To Come

I remember well the angst of my teenage years. Being rejected today by the girl who said hi to me in the hallway yesterday was the worst feeling imaginable. The worst feeling, that is, until a couple football players called me a nerd, then laughed. And the girl who rejected me laughed too. Later, I knew I would be in trouble at home when I had to get the D on my math test signed by a parent. The adolescent world is full of tragedy, isn't it?

My point is that what seemed like the end of life as I knew it in middle and high school is immaterial today. Tragedies weren't really tragedies when we saw what came after them. Now, losing a job, or a spouse, or a child to drugs is a real disaster. Maybe that's the way God works. Death in the family, a hurricane in Florida, a flood in Missouri, a wildfire in California....

How could a God of love let such awful things happen to us or others? I suggest that maybe what comes after life on earth is so fantastic that our problems here are nothing more than a zit before a date.

"I think we need something more than knowing God is with us in our difficulties. We also need hope that our suffering is 'not in vain.' Have you noticed how desperate the families of lost loved ones are to say that? They work to reform laws or change social conditions that led to the death. They need to believe that the death of their loved ones has led to new life, that the injustice has led to new life, that the injustice has led to greater justice." (The Reason for God, by Timothy Keller,  https://timothykeller.com/books/the-reason-for-god)

And a couple pages later, Keller quotes C. S. Lewis: "They say of some temporal suffering, 'No further bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory."

I believe God can use my alcoholism for greater good. Someday, those bouts of depression and drunkenness will matter less than being picked last for kickball.