Birthdays

For most of my adult life I've hated it when my birthday comes up. This year I was starting to feel the dread because I always get more depressed as it gets closer.

There are a few reasons I don't like my birthdays, the main one being that I wish I wasn't born. Life is too (increasingly) difficult and this world is fraught with evil and suffering.

I've been going through 2 Corinthians and I'm familiar with this verse in NIV:

2 Corinthians 4:17 NIV For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

But going through it in other versions really struck me:

2 Corinthians 4:17 NASB For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,

2 Corinthians 4:17 NRSV For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure,

If I were to say that the glory in heaven will be 900 trillion tons and our suffering here, as bad as it can be, is like one tenth of a gram, that wouldn't show enough of a difference because that isn't "beyond all measure."

This year God is teaching me to hope for heaven and have faith that when that time comes around, it will have been more than worth it and I will be very glad that I was born so that I could be with God forever.

It doesn't make this life much easier but I need to ask God to give me the grace to have faith that it will be as He says it will be and experience the hope for heaven in this life.