2 Corinthians 4:16–18
In January 2020, I thought I had a heart attack. I was sitting in my office at the seminary where I work, waiting my turn to speak in chapel to a thousand students attending our annual youth conference. I spoke at the event every year. I was prepared. I was not nervous or worried. Iced coffee in hand, I was simply sitting at my desk, watching the previous speaker on the livestream, casually waiting.
Suddenly I felt my chest tighten and my heart begin to race. The only way I have been able to describe what happened next is that it seemed as if my body was “shutting down.” I had the overwhelming feeling that I was about to die.
The next thing I remember thinking is that if I die in my office on a Saturday, nobody would find me for a long time, so I made my way toward the chapel complex where I might be able to get help. I made it as far as a bench in the lobby where I was noticed by one of our security staff, and it was not long before 911 was called, paramedics arrived, and I was being gawked at by hundreds of teenagers who were filing out of the chapel for a break.
I was not rushed to the hospital that day. The paramedics offered, but they determined it wasn’t necessary. After several tests and scans that week in a variety of medical facilities, my doctor diagnosed my episode as a “stress-induced panic attack.”
This diagnosis wasn’t entirely surprising to me. I had been dealing with sporadic episodes of anxiety for years (and still do). But I’d never had an episode that terrifying, that serious. I had not had one that I’d mistaken for a heart attack and felt as though I would die. The other surprising thing about this event was the circumstance of its occurrence. I wasn’t doing anything particularly stressful or taxing. In fact, up until that moment, I felt fairly relaxed. I was just hanging out. Just waiting.
Five years later, I have not had any incidents as serious as that one. But I know full well that I’m carrying around in this aging and increasingly tired body the potential for another all out collapse. There is a dark shadow just lurking right behind me at all times. I have no illusions about my frailty comparing to the kinds of disabilities and diseases with which millions of others suffer on a daily basis. To varying degrees, every person on this broken, cursed earth feels that brokenness, that cursedness in their bones. We all try to medicate against it in different ways. We all try to distract ourselves from the darkness of that shadow. We even try to vanquish it. But try as we might, as far as we might distance ourselves from it, it’s always there. It’s waiting too.
In 2 Corinthians 4:16–18, the apostle Paul, who knows a little something about carrying brokenness around in his body, encourages believers not to lose heart. Outwardly we may be wasting away, but inwardly we are being renewed. How can he say this, knowing that we can’t out wait the shadow of brokenness?
The brokenness will be redeemed. And in fact, the redemption will be so eternally glorious, it will, by contrast, make the brokenness seem like a “light, momentary affliction.”
If you think about it, our world this side of heaven is a lifetime of Holy Saturday. Christ has come, and he will come again.
But in the meantime, we are waiting. For some, the wait will feel short; for others, it may feel like an eternity. But we can take heart in knowing that the wait isn’t forever. And while the shadow of death and brokenness may be waiting for us, it is also waiting for its own end. What we see is just transient.
What we can’t see is eternal. And for those who trust in Jesus, not even death is eternal.
In his cross, Christ has canceled the debt that stood against us, taking the condemnation we were owed upon himself and removing it forever from us. In his resurrection, Christ emerges victorious over death and hell, holding their keys and purchasing the power of eternal life for all who believe in him. This means that the resurrection of Jesus is the shadow lurking behind death itself! He’ll get it before it gets us.
On this Holy Saturday, whatever our ailments, whatever our worries—whatever our circumstances or sins—let us take heart in our waiting. There’s an eternal weight of glory coming. And in the end, we will see with the eyes of immortality that it was worth waiting for.
Jared C. Wilson is assistant professor of pastoral ministry at Midwestern Seminary and pastor for preaching at Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri. He is the author of Friendship with the Friend of Sinners and cohost of The Heart of Pastoring Podcast.
