Conclusion: Marching to Zion
Before the start of the workday at our Joni and Friends offices, we often begin by singing a hymn together. Today we sang a hymn by Isaac Watts that always gets my heart beating faster: “We’re Marching to Zion.”
Come, we that love the Lord,
And let our joys be known;
Join in a song with sweet accord,
Join in a song with sweet accord
And thus surround the throne,
And thus surround the throne.
We’re marching to Zion,
Beautiful, beautiful Zion;
We’re marching upward to Zion,
The beautiful city of God.
I may be paralyzed, but when I sing this hymn, I feel like marching. And I am! I’m heading for heaven, a step closer every minute, every hour, every day. I’m living my life here on earth as though eternity depended on it. And it truly does.
This is why the Bible says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2).
It reminds us:
It was good for me to be afflicted,
so that I might learn your decrees.
(Psalm 119:71)
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (2 Corinthians 4:17)
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings. (Romans 5:3)
The Bible constantly tries to get us to look at life this way—and the longer I live the more I see it. Scripture steadfastly tries to implant the perspective of the future into our present, like a voice counseling us, “This is the way it’s going to all turn out. This is how it will all seem when it’s over, a better way, I promise. Keep on marching!”
It’s a view that separates what is lasting from what will fall by the wayside.
It’s a view that reminds us that real Life is out ahead of us, just over the horizon, and that we’re moving toward a destination.
It’s a view that teaches us that wisdom gained through faith and perseverance is more precious than rubies.
Scripture can do no less. It only deals in realities, always underscoring the final results—the heart settled, the soul rejoicing, the glimpses of Zion through parting clouds … through tears. Human nature gags on such a perspective. I remember a friend of mine who had just lost his wife to cancer. His grief was like a heavy blanket draped over his body. He couldn’t see two inches beyond his sorrow. “When I try to think about going on without her,” he said, “I have a picture of myself walking on the backside of the moon for the rest of my life.”
That’s grief talking. And we all understand that. Our earthbound perspective tries to rivet us to the pain of the present, blinding us to the realities of the future. Human nature would rather lick its wounds and sneer, “That’s pie in the sky. The future doesn’t count.”
But it does count. And it has everything to do with this present moment. Tim Stafford writes:
Scripture can seem at times so blithely and irritatingly out of touch with reality, brushing past huge philosophical problems and personal agony. That is just how life is when you are looking from the end. Perspective changes everything. What seemed so important at the time has no significance at all.
Time is slippery stuff, isn’t it? The past always looks different than it did back when. Memory is selective. It chooses only a few highlights of lasting importance from all that happened. When we recall pain in the past, we do so with a perspective we simply didn’t have going through it.
We didn’t understand how it would all pan out.
In the middle of suffering we see only confusion. For me, it was a bizarre mix of tie-dyed-T-shirts, the smell of pot in the hallways of the state institution, and thoughts of suicide. If we were looking for roads that lead somewhere through the pain, we were doing just that—looking, not finding them.
But now, so many years later, I’m finally understanding. I have found the path. All because I see things differently.
It depends on our perspective—where in time we are looking from. When looking back on a heartache, the pain fades like a hazy memory. The trauma has dulled like an old photograph. Only the results survive, the things of lasting importance—like the good marriage, the successful career, or in my case, the acceptance of a wheelchair.
These are the events that rise and remain, like stepping-stones above raging waters. These are the things that carry us to the other side of suffering, to the place where we have a sense of “arrival,” the place where we are more “us” than we were years earlier.
When we come through “the valley of the shadow of death,” we are different people. Better, strong, wiser. It’s what happens on the other side of our heartaches and trials. He “prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” Like me, back in that state hospital, wheeling placidly by a faded poster of a huge marijuana leaf.
He anoints “my head with oil; my cup overflows” with the satisfaction of surviving suffering with a smile (Psalm 23:4–5).
The Bible blatantly tells us to “rejoice in suffering” and “welcome trials as friends” because God wants us to step into the reality He has in mind for us, the only reality that ultimately counts. It requires gutsy faith to do so, but as we trust God, we move beyond the present into the future. In fact, we enter the very future God intends for us.
Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you’ll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. (Colossians 3:3 The Message)
Real life which is invisible.
That seems as impossible to comprehend as “rejoicing in suffering.” But don’t forget, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). Like watching an old-fashioned Polaroid snapshot develop before your eyes, the “we” God intends us to be as a result of suffering emerges when we “welcome trials.” “We share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory … the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:17, 18, emphasis added).
The future is straining to get out. To be revealed in us. We have seen the future and it is us—Christ in us and us in Christ. “If, indeed, we share in his sufferings.”
As we do, our perspective is changed.
And if there is one thing my wheelchair has done for me, it has changed my perspective. One day I will arrive in heaven, look in my rearview mirror at earth and see that, yes, suffering made my faith more muscular … jerked my thoughts and values right-side-up … honed and shaped my character … made me more sensitive to others who were hurting … and birthed a ministry to disabled people around the world.
But best of all, my hardships have pushed me deeper into the arms of my wonderful Savior. In short, my suffering blessed me with a heavenly point of view. And I love it. I’m passionate about it.
This is what God wants—hearts burning with a passion for the future things, on fire for kingdom realities that are out of this world. God wants His people aflame with hope as we move day-by-day toward “the better country.”
A “consider it pure joy” outlook affects the way we live on earth.
Though we still suffer as we march toward Zion, we become cities on a hill, and lights on a lamp stand for all to see and take courage from that welcome radiance. People whose hearts are ignited for heaven make good inhabitants of earth.
And that’s not all. We leave a fragrance as we march by.
Paul tells us, it is God “who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him” (2 Corinthians 2:14).
Suffering in the present turns our hearts toward the future, like a mother turning the face of her child, insisting, “Look this way!”Once heaven has our attention, a fervid anticipation for God’s ultimate reality—appearing with Him in glory—begins to glow, making everything earthly pale in comparison. Earth’s pain keeps crushing our hopes, reminding us this world can never, never satisfy us.
Only heaven can.
And every time we begin to nestle too comfortably on this planet, God racks open the locks of the dam to allow an ice-cold splash of suffering to wake us from our spiritual slumber.
The fact is, this world never was our true home. We’ve always been passing through. We’ve always been on our way Somewhere Else. We’ve always been “marching to Zion.”
God wants us to march into the reality He has in mind for us, the only reality that ultimately counts. It requires gutsy faith to do so, but as we trust God, we move beyond the present into the future. In fact, we create the very future God intends for us. We bring the joy of Zion, the happiness of heaven, right into the present tense.
The men of grace have found,
Glory begun below.
Celestial fruits on earthly ground
Celestial fruits on earthly ground
From faith and hope may grow,
From faith and hope may grow.
So we set our focus not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is only temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
And its price is far, far above rubies.