When we experience deep suffering, it can feel as if it will never end. Pain drags on relentlessly as blow after blow knocks us down. It’s puzzling, then, that the New Testament authors sometimes describe suffering in quite different terms. Paul calls our afflictions “light” and “momentary” (2 Cor 4:17), and Peter says we suffer “for a little while” (1 Peter 1:6). 

Peter and Paul weren’t delusional, and they certainly weren’t minimizing the difficulty of our suffering. In her article “Suffering Is Not the End of Your Story,” Blair Linne explains, “when Peter emphasizes the shortness of our suffering, it can only be understood in one way: in light of eternity.” Peter and Paul endured suffering beyond what many of us can imagine, but they viewed it as brief compared to the eternal joys that are coming. 

We will experience pain in this life, but if we are in Christ, suffering doesn’t have the final say. Blair continues, “suffering isn’t the end of our story, because suffering isn’t the end of the story for Jesus. His story includes eternal glory.”  And that means your story, sister in Christ, includes eternal glory too. You are united to him, and what is his is yours. There will be an end to your misery, and when you enter the joy of Christ’s presence, the overwhelming weight of that glory will make the most searing pain seem like a vapor. The suffering feels long, but eternity is longer.