Keep a Forever Perspective
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:26
A Psalm of Asaph
“Life is not always fair,” I once said in a class of four-year-olds after hearing once too often, “That’s not fair!” Those words were repeated all day—and when the parents came to pick up their children, they were greeted with this newly found wisdom.
Well it’s not!
The psalmist Asaph wrote, “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart” (Psalm 73:1). Deeply troubled by what he saw, Asaph cried, “Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments” (Psalm 73:13-14).
What Asaph needed, what we all need, is a broader viewpoint. When Asaph went to the sanctuary—to church—he stopped comparing his life with theirs.” He stopped letting his emotions cloud his mind, overshadowing what he knew God had revealed about himself.
Asaph was reminded of the benefits bestowed on those who love God: his continual presence, his comfort, and his guidance. Not only is he the strength of bodies and 
hearts that may weaken and fail us, but he is our inheritance forever (Psalm 73:23-26).
In the sanctuary, Asaph saw a sacrifice, a substitutionary animal whose death reconciled him to God—an act that looked forward to the sacrificial death of God’s son, Jesus Christ. In what may be called the most unfair act in history, an innocent, sinless man—the only innocent, sinless man who ever lived—suffered and died for the sins of others, that they might have eternal life.
Are you troubled by the apparent unfairness of life as Asaph had been? Do what he did—go to church. But don’t look at the imperfect people you see there! Focus on what Jesus did for us on the cross. Let him strengthen your heart and give you a heavenly, eternal perspective.
DIG DEEPER:
When Asaph went to the sanctuary, he received more than uplifted feelings. What truth did Asaph understand about the wicked as recorded in Psalm 73:16-20, 27? What will happen to them?
Read John 9:1-38. Most Jews in Jesus’s time believed that the good prospered and the bad suffered. What did Jesus tell the disciples when they asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” What do you believe about suffering?
What was Jesus’s reply when Peter said, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us” (Matthew 19:27-30)? What did Peter later write about present suffering and future inheritance in 1 Peter 1:3-7? What do you believe about your heavenly inheritance?
Nancy J. Baker
This devotion is part of a series on the words “But God.”