There is a beautiful text that came to my mind today as I returned to the gym in hopes of redeeming some of my ill-spent youth. I first thought of these verses as a joke about my aching muscles and general fatigue resulting from months of neglect. But the more I read them the deeper their significance.

That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

This is the present and future hope for those who follow Jesus.