"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day."

2 Corinthians 4:16.

Time. It's all relative, as my dorm neighbor and Biology group-mate said to me yesterday. We all have our own perceptions of time. "Time flies when you're having fun." Time seems to drag on forever when we're bored. After spending fifty minutes in almost all of my classes here at UGA, my hour-and-fifteen-minute classes seem to crawl by, even though all of my classes at Kennesaw State last year were an hour and fifteen minutes long. Time zones. Daylight Savings Time. It's all relative.

And as Paul says in today's verse, this relativity of time applies to our spiritual lives as well. As time goes on, we grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. At least, that's the hope. It's what we've come to expect. But as we grow older, we do not grow closer to life, but rather closer to death. It's grim, but it's true.

But Paul says that there is hope: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." Though we grow closer to physical death, we grow closer to spiritual life! The closer we get to physical death, to leaving our physical bodies, the closer we get to entering into the spiritual life with God in heaven. So this should be our encouragement whenever we are sick, whenever diseases and disabilities get us down: that even though our bodies our dying, the Holy Spirit is filling us with eternal life!

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." ~ 2 Corinthians 4:18