Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about friends, family, and others who have experienced life-shattering moments.
The kind that changes everything in an instant (or even over time).
A diagnosis or accident.
A loved one taken too soon.
A betrayal.
A loss.
A dream gone.
A relationship severed.
Moments like these shake us to our core—and they force us to wrestle with some of life’s deepest questions.
One question I keep coming back to is this:
What perspective am I living from?
At the core, there are two main ways we tend to see the world:
P E R S P E C T I V E 
My reward is in this life. The temporal. The here and now.
P E R S P E C T I V E 
My reward is in the next life. The eternal. The unseen.
When life shatters, Perspective 1 quickly loses its shine. If my reward is here, then my pain is just… pain—and even if there’s some redemption, it’s only temporary. But with an eternal perspective, suffering is redeemed in ways that outlast this life.
God uses it to deepen my faith, shape my character, draw me closer to Him, and equip me to encourage others in their suffering. In His hands, pain becomes a tool that forms me more into the image of Christ.
This is where perspective changes everything. And the one I choose—consciously or not—shapes everything:
How I live.
How I love.
How I forgive.
How I sacrifice.
How I endure suffering.
It shapes what captures my focus, time, affections—and even what I invest my energy and resources in. It influences how I treat people and how I respond when life doesn’t go the way I hoped or expected.
Because if this life is all there is, then my desires and ambitions easily take center stage. I’ll be tempted to rely on my own strategies and understanding to chase the “best life” I can build for myself and maybe even for others.
But if eternity is real—if the unseen is truly more real than the seen—then I can live differently, with my eyes fixed on what lasts forever.
As 2 Corinthians 4:18 (AMP) reminds us:
“So we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen; for the things which are visible are temporal [just brief and fleeting], but the things which are invisible are everlasting and imperishable.”
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