What if we have misunderstood the purpose of this life?
From the moment we are old enough to dream, we are taught to pursue a destination: happiness, success, fulfillment, peace. Even as Christians, we can quietly assume that spiritual maturity should eventually lead us to a place where the struggles lessen, the questions fade, and life finally makes sense.
But what if that expectation is wrong?
What if God is doing something deeper than making us comfortable?
The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah knew something about disappointment.
Called by God from his youth, he spent decades delivering a message few wanted to hear. He watched his nation reject the warnings of God, endured ridicule, isolation, imprisonment, and heartbreak, and saw Jerusalem fall despite his faithfulness. Again and again he cried out to God with questions that sound remarkably familiar to our own.
Why is this happening?
How long must this continue?
Have You forgotten me?
In the midst of one of those complaints, the Lord answered Jeremiah with a startling question:
“If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, how will you compete with horses?”
It was not a rebuke of Jeremiah’s pain.
It was a revelation of God’s purpose.
“Even as Christians, we can quietly assume that spiritual maturity should
eventually lead us to a place where the struggles lessen,
the questions fade, and life finally makes sense.”
What if the goal was never to arrive at a place of complete healing, wholeness, comfort, vindication, and happiness on this side of eternity?
What if the ache itself is part of the design?
What if the unanswered prayer, the lingering weakness, the closed door, the season of uncertainty, or the wound that never fully heals is not evidence that God has abandoned us?
What if it is evidence that He is still at work?
This is not to suggest that God delights in our pain, nor that suffering is some form of penance by which we earn His favor.
The world is broken.
Death, disease, disappointment, injustice, and loss were never part of God’s original design.
Yet God is so wise, so powerful, and so committed to His purposes that He is able to take even the consequences of a fallen world and weave them into His work within us.
Not all suffering comes from His hand.
But none of it escapes His hands.
We spend so much of our lives asking God to remove the very things He may be using to shape us.
We want relief.
He wants maturity.
We want answers.
He wants trust.
We want comfort.
He wants Christlikeness.
We want happiness.
He wants holiness.
“What if the ache itself is part of the design?”
The question is not whether God cares about our pain.
He does.
The cross settled that forever.
The question is whether we believe He has a larger purpose than removing it.
Looking for the things of heaven now can cause us to miss God’s mission in this world,
as well as the hidden work He is doing in us to prepare us for the world to come.
Perhaps the goal was never to become whole enough to serve Him.
Perhaps serving Him is part of how He makes us whole.
If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, how will you compete with horses?
Maybe the struggle is not the interruption.
Maybe it is the training.
Maybe the very thing we are asking God to remove is the thing He is using to prepare us for what comes next.
It was the Man of Sorrows that said,
“I am the way . . .”
Not merely the destination.
The Way!
Jeremiah’s story did not end with immediate vindication. Much of what God promised unfolded beyond Jeremiah’s lifetime. Yet his faithfulness became part of a much larger story, one that pointed beyond earthly outcomes to the certainty of God’s ultimate redemption.
The lesson is not that suffering is good in itself.
The lesson is that God wastes none of it.
The horses are coming.
And so is the King.
Be faithful, my friends.
Heaven is returning.
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This reflection is part of A Mirror Dimly, a companion to The Return of Heaven.