The Revised Common Lectionary, a compendium of Biblical passages read in churches each week of the liturgical year, today includes the following verse:

“For our momentary light affliction is producing in us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure and proportion….” (2 Corinthians 4:17)

Meditating on scriptures like this can bring to mind interesting thoughts and images, as it did for me today:

Affliction weighs too much sometimes,
enormous gravity that hangs on limbs and ligaments;
shoulders slouch and legs shuffle.

Odd then that such hardship fortifies us
not for the succor of relief but for another weight,
that being glory.

As lilacs have endured the heft of winter cold
that they may then be burdened with the fireworks
of fragrant flowers

so too will we be resurrected in seraphic Spring,
bursting with great blooms of glory,
extravagant beyond all measure.