Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. Romans 8:18-23 (NLT)
A little over a year ago I published a blog article titled Heartbreak, Groaning, and The Not-As-It-Should-Be World. In this post, I talked about "suffering with Christ" as walking along with people as they experience the not-rightness of our fallen world. I opened the post by pointing out that "In fact, the first few chapters of the book of Romans spell out how all the world has become affected by this not-right-ness, to the point where no person can claim to be as they should be, and the result is death. Death in both body and spirit, spiritual deadness resulting from being disconnected from the source of all life, God, and ultimately, subject to decay and physical death as a visible demonstration of the effects of this not-right-ness.
