Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to the Kingdom Perspective.

In the midst of the Nazi crisis, English Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared, “A pessimist sees calamity in every opportunity, but an optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity.”

Though Churchill was the leader of a country that overtly proclaimed itself “Christian”, Churchill himself was not much of a churchman. One time he quipped: “I could hardly be called a pillar of the Church. I am more in the nature of a [flying] buttress, for I support it from the outside” (Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography (London: Plume, 2002), 49 n.)

Although he was not personally a Christian, nonetheless, it seems that his tenacious and optimistic spirit owes itself in no small part to the Christian context in which he was raised. The Christian religion at its heart is a religion of optimism. It believes that the best is yet to come. It believes that our labors in this life will be rewarded, and that evil will not ultimately triumph.

This gives us buoyancy in our troubles and the gumption to overcome them.

Again, listen to Churchill: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”

As Apostle Paul puts it:
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:16-17 ESV)

My friends, this is good news when we face the troubles and trials of our days.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
~ 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (ESV)