Something Better

When someone suffers a loss of some kind, like a break-up or the loss of a job, it is rather cliché to say, “God has something better for you.”  Yet, when God says He has “something better” for us, it is no empty platitude. The writer of Hebrews tells of persecuted, tortured and martyred saints who died without ever knowing the full impact of their lives because He, the God “who is able to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think” (Eph. 3:20), had “something better” for them (11:40).

Of course the way we define “something better” is all important. For example, after a year of surgery, medical procedures, and invasive treatments, it’s not hard for me to imagine “something better.” A year ago, I was imagining I would be mentoring students at Phoenix Seminary. What could be better than that?  But the Lord showed me that mentoring students is something “I” can do. And that “something better” for me would be something “I” can not do. In God's economy, something better is anything that makes us more dependent on Him, and, ultimately, conforming us to the image of Christ. So then, is not He the “something better” our hearts are yearning for?