How Long?

Everyone seems to have his or her own 'how long?' though it comes in different measures or degrees depending on what we're going through at the time.

A discomforting situation that has lingered, a checkered hope and expectation that has seen us fluctuate between the light of joy and the darkness of frustrating moments crying "how long?"

A marriage we're merely enduring and not enjoying, an addiction/bad habit we relish yet desire to be freed from knowing fully well that it's taking a toll on us, an ailment or allergy that often makes us want to jump out of our skin and enter a new body, a disability that often makes life very miserable and unbearable on the premise of which satan suggests to us that it would have been better if God didn't create us and cause us to be born or come into existence in this life.
The list is as endless as the question.

In the valley of how long we all have our minds chequered with truth and falsehood, faith and fears, gleams of hope & dark shades of grey/uncertainty.

So often in this valley we find people to share our 'how long' with not knowing that they have their own 'how long?'

No one on the planet ever seems to have the answer to this burdensome question in our hearts.

Depressed and despondent, streams of 'how long' roll down our eyes and cheeks, tears of years we've spent in hope now leaving us till they're gone and we're dry and can no longer cry.

Gloomy, dreary and weary, our souls are sore oppressed like we're in an endless dark tunnel where the answer to our cry is nothing but an echo that repeats to us the question 'how long?'

We ask how long only to be asked 'how long?' As the travail of our soul echoes in the wind it seems creation is also asking us 'how long?'

God speaking in them to us and making us know that the whole of creation is groaning together in pain until now.

As we listen deeply, beyond the voice of reason and the travail of our own soul, we'll hear the travail of billions of souls around the world and the loud cries of many going down daily in the ashes/dust of history, eternally lost to destruction, ruin and perdition.

Soon it dawns on us that much more than we ask ourselves how long, we are actually being asked this question and called upon by creation to answer/profer a solution.

How long is in time and deals with time, only eternity holds the final answer and God has set eternity as a longing in the hearts of men, but the fall of man from the place of fellowship with God made him plunge into the vanity & darkness of his own soul and wisdom where all he sees is the temporal and the burdens/concerns of this life. 

Get back to fellowship with God & look beyond time/your present situation, see beyond the vanity of your own soul & wisdom, let the desire for the eternal grow in your heart & overwhelm your temporal circumstance.

If you can see & fix your eyes on the eternal/unseen there's nothing in this temporal life/world you cannot endure & overcome. 

Faith is the victory that overcomes the world & all that is in it. There's no amount of suffering and pressure in this world worse than death, at the point of death every hope as to this world is gone forever yet the victory of faith in Christ is not just over the circumstances of this life but over death itself thus we see in the records of biblical history, men and women who died in faith or for their faith in Christ, seeing the eternal. They faced death not being afraid of it & passed through it like it's nothing but a door knowing it has no power over them but a temporal/brief hold which will be broken forever at the dawn of resurrection. 

We will surely endure and overcome if we keep our eyes on the eternal. 

1 John 5

4  For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world,even our faith. 5  Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?

Hebrews 11

27  By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.

 33  Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34  Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 35  Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection:

Ecclesiastes 3:11  He has made every thing beautiful in its time: also he has put eternity in men's hearts, so that no man can find out the work that God does from the beginning to the end.

Romans 8

18  For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19  For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 20  For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 21  Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22  For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. 23  And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. 24  For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? 25  But if we hope for that we see not,then do we with patience wait for it.

1 Corinthians 15

51  Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54  So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55  O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56  The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57  But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.