Maintaining Perspective in a "Sour Patch Kids World"

I just realized that the Sour Patch Kids slogan is a lot like life.  Their slogan is "Sour. Sweet. Gone," and isn't that the way life is?  You have good times, you have bad times, and then all of a sudden...you're dead.  It's strange to think of life in such simplistic terms, but it's that type of thinking that gets us through the hard times in life.  During life's "sour" seasons we need to be reminded that the "sweet" is around the corner: we need to be reminded that the "sour" won't last forever.  Maintaining a hopeful perspective in the midst of pain is a challenge, but for me, that's not the hardest part of living in a "Sour Patch Kid's world".  My struggle is in trying to maintain a proper perspective through the rest of it.

I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of fun, pleasure, comfort, joy, happiness...really, all the good stuff in life.  I seek out the sweet life, and I get myself into trouble once I find it.  It's not necessarily because my idea of fun is evil, but because my idea of fun is unrealistic.  I desperately want the sweet to be permanent.

Wanting the sweet life and believing the sweet life is permanent are two different things.  Unfortunately, I struggle to separate them.  I find myself in the midst of a "sweet" season, and begin to believe that I've finally arrived in heaven.  No more trouble, no more pain.  I've finally received the prize I was desperately seeking.  As you can imagine, this is a recipe for disaster.  

All of a sudden life takes a nose dive, and my faith is shaken.  "Why did this happen?  What did I do wrong?  Why are you doing this to me God?"  Those seem like very stupid questions for a person to ask while living in a broken world, but I ask them nonetheless.  And why do I ask these questions?  Because I've failed to maintain a realistic perspective in the midst of a "Sour Patch Kid's world".  Instead of seeing "sweet" as a gift from God, "sweet" has taken the place of God.  But unlike God, "sweet" is temporal.  

To maintain the proper perspective in life, I need to remember that my idea of "sweet" will not last forever.  In fact, the whole "Sour Patch Kids world" as I know it will soon be gone, and a new slogan will replace it: "Sour. Sweet. Eternal."

According to the bible, "sour" and "sweet" become permanent after this life passes away.  You may not agree with the bible and the words of Jesus, but I do.  I'm convinced that God uses the bible to reveal reality to humanity, and the reality is that our temporal world will eventually be replaced with a permanent one.  This replacement will happen sooner for some than for others, but it will happen to all of us eventually.  After this life ends, we will either live with God forever or we will live without Him forever.  It is the presence or absence of God that determines whether eternal life is "sweet" or "sour," and His presence is determined by our relationship to Jesus.  We can either accept Jesus as our God and savior, or we can reject Him.  By believing that Jesus died and rose again from the grave, and confessing that He is our Lord, we can experience God in our lives both now and forever.  And in the next post I'll explain why His presence is so "sweet."