Days 284&285: 1 Corinthians 15-16; 2 Corinthians 1-4

A few random reflections on today's reading:

1. This first one is a scripture often appropriately used at funerals. Today, as I read it, I found it very encouraging. I've been thinking a lot (too much?) about my own fleeting mortality lately. There's no escaping the trite fact that life is short. However...

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
    “Where, O death, is your victory?
       Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:51-57)

2. I thought this one was interesting because of it's seeming contradiction:

But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me. (1 Corinthians 16:8-9)

I'm afraid that, if it were me, I would have taken the fact of opposition as a closed door for effective work. What does that say about me? What does that say about Paul?

3. This next one only stood out to me because of what I wrote in yesterday's post about how we often mistakenly say that God won't allow anything to come into our lives that we can't handle. Apparently that wasn't true for Paul...

We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. (2 Corinthians 1:8)

4. Finally, one more reminder of the temporary nature of this life...and the assurance that there's more (and better) to come...

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)