Hope In The Midst Of Suffering: The Kara Tippetts StorySample

Hope For Eternity

Song - "I'll See You Again" by Sofia J.

Every life has disappointments, sorrow, and painful interruptions.  We must believe that God gives us a hope that will not die with any loss, but grows stronger, and more beautiful in our suffering.  

In the film, The Long Goodbye, The Kara Tippetts Story, Kara, a young mother of four, speaks of the decline of her health with acceptance and surrender, but not without joy.  

“I feel like I’m a little girl at a party whose dad’s asking her to leave early. And I’m throwing a fit. I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to go.”

The Word of God reminds us that this life is a blip on the radar of eternity.  Yet our time here is hugely important. The brevity of time should not cause us to throw up our hands in hopeless surrender to insignificance.  

There is more to our existence than our own health, talents, and ability to bloom and then fade away.  We are encouraged by the Psalmist to number our days.  We must find a way to appreciate time as Kara did.

“Kara was in a place where she understood time, in a sort of crystalized way.  She had a laser focus on the preciousness of time, and the gift that time is.” - Ann Voskamp

When we use each day, each moment, for His glory, His Word will outlast us and our efforts.  How futile then to spend our time doing anything but rooting ourselves in what will last.  We must believe, in faith, that His grace will draw us to His presence when life here is over.  That belief compels us to live a life worthy of Him. We number our days, make them count for Him, in order to gain a heart that we can offer to Him.  A heart full of wisdom, and passing into the gates of eternity we sing the same song of praise we were singing while on earth.

That life of praise is the party we are hesitant to leave, but it is also the party we will find even more lavishly decorated, abundantly catered, and well attended when we arrive at our Heavenly Father’s house.  

Our hope is not in the continuation of a body that will one day perish, no matter how well we maintain it. Rather in a Father who calls us all to Him in order to continue the party He so lovingly offers us, even here as a sample of the perfection that is to come.