What are you looking forward to?
It’s a hard question for me to answer these days. So much of the future is unknown. I’m looking forward to getting home, but I don’t know when that will be. I’m looking forward to a scheduled conference next winter, but it might be canceled. We all have been disappointed by the loss of things we were looking forward to – plans that felt so sure and have now dissolved.
“Look forward to” is an idiomatic phrase in English. While it can be taken literally (looking at something in the future), it usually has a connotation of excitement, anticipation, and joy. One dictionary defines the term as “await eagerly.” Anticipation is so important as we seek to live fully the days given to us. It’s hard to be motivated to do difficult things when we feel we have “nothing to look forward to.”
The world seems to be going crazy. While this is not humanity’s first plague of sickness, it seems to be our first experience of having – at our fingertips – the plight of the entire world so visible, so obvious, so loud. “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Rom 8:22). Bodies that were strong have been made weak. Closure of airports and borders limits our unhindered movement. We, too, “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (8:23).
We groan inwardly. Strong’s Concordance tells us that this is a groaning or sighing that expresses grief, anger, or desire. Paul uses the same word in 2 Corinthians 5:4, expressing a similar idea: “While we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened.” One commentator says this word “denotes feeling which is internal and unexpressed” (notes on this word).
We inwardly feel the weight of grief and anger, and all we can do is sigh. We know that someday death will pass and pain will end, so we groan in our deep desire. But we don’t just groan. We hope. We expect. We eagerly await. We do have something to look forward to. We don’t know when mortality will be swallowed up by life (2 Cor 5:4) but the Spirit in us bears witness to the confidence that it will happen.
The beautiful thing about this passage is that these two actions are nestled right there together in the same phrase. We sigh in our anger and grief over present circumstances and we look forward to what is to come. We inwardly groan and eagerly await. We don’t see it yet. “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom 8:25).
So, we wait. We wait with patience, excitement, and anticipation… but also with grief, sadness, and disappointment. We wait because we have a hope that is eternal.