Long before I knew him as the author of Old School, one of my favorite novels, Tobias Wolff was the author of one of my favorite quotes: we are made to persist– that’s how we find out who we are. Last week I posed the question of what it might look like for us to persist in light of what some perceive to be an interregnum between “ages,” between worlds and ways of life. This week, I’d like to spend some time drawing some spiritual connections for the contemporary moment, what it might look like to persist as Christians in this particular context.
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This past weekend I was reading a book that made passing mention of 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 in the context of the spiritual life. It’s a famous passage, though perhaps not as famous as Paul’s image ten verses earlier about “this treasure in jars of clay.” Paul writes:
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.