How Heavy is Our Suffering?

"Then Job answered and said: ‘Oh, that my grief were fully weighed, and my calamity laid with it on the scales! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea" (Job 6:1-3).

Job is obviously thinking of a balance here. On one side, he puts his grief and his misfortune, and on the other side, the sand of the seas. The scales with the sorrow go down. His sorrow weighs more than the sand of the seas. For Job, his suffering is so great that nothing can outweigh it.

It was different for the apostle Paul. He writes: "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Corinthians 4:17). In a sense, we also have a scale in front of us here. In one pan lies the "eternal weight of glory" – and that is why Paul describes the tribulationIn the Bible, tribulation stands for oppression and persecution, such as the first Christians had to go through (2 Thes 1:4) and in particular the earthly people of God, Israel,... More as something light that lies in the other pan.

Taken on its own and weighed by earthly standards, tribulationIn the Bible, tribulation stands for oppression and persecution, such as the first Christians had to go through (2 Thes 1:4) and in particular the earthly people of God, Israel,... More is indeed something heavy. Especially when they are tribulations of the caliber that Job and Paul experienced. But when you compare something to eternal glory, as Paul did, then everything gets light. In terms of experience, of course, we limp far behind – but we still want to learn to think more about the "eternal weight of glory"!