Paul writes 2 Corinthians under physical strain — he has been beaten, shipwrecked, slandered by rival apostles. He does not pretend he is fine. He says, in essentially the same breath, my body is failing me, and the weight of what is being made in me is heavier than the weight that is breaking me. The chapter is one of the New Testament's most honest accounts of suffering.

From the writers we read together

C.S. Lewis

Oxford literary scholar, on the same passage in his most famous sermon

Lewis preached The Weight of Glory on Paul's phrase. His point is that we have not aimed too high in our desires; we have settled too low. We are like ignorant children who go on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by a holiday at the sea.

If your day feels heavy, Paul's verb is interesting: the affliction is preparing the glory. Katergazetai — "working it out, fashioning it." The hard things are not in a different room from the glory. They are the workshop in which the glory is being made.