Outweighed in Eternity

"I am leading you along the high road... Your assignment is to follow Me... Learn to trust Me when things go "wrong"... when the path becomes rocky and steep. Breathe deep draughts of My Presence, and hold tightly to My hand. Together we can make it!" (19)
The devo for today highlighted a verse that has mystified me. 2 Cor. 4:17 speaks of how "our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory." (HCSB)
The picture that comes to my mind is of an old fashioned balancing scale, used in a grocery store when I was a child. On one side rests the selected weight, on the other side, the selected produce. The produce is carefully added until the two sides of the scale are level with each other. Thus, one pound of cherries can be accurately determined and purchased at a fair market price.
This passage is contrasting our present afflictions with our eternal glory. According to the Greek, eternal glory will be "in excess and to excess." So, if we could place our present pain (emotional, physical, etc) on one side of the scale and try to balance its weight with the unseen eternal glory God has in store for us, it could not be leveled. Why? Because God has excessively tipped the scale in our favor, giving us "an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory" in exchange for our present pain. In the scales of eternity, glory will exponentially out weigh the distress of our present earthly experience.
However, my physical eyes can see only half the scale. So, I must challenge myself to "focus" on that yet unseen, hidden, eternal, other half of the scale! Somehow God takes the weightiness of the present and exponentially outweighs it in the glorious eternal.
Trusting Him with the Seen & Praising Him for the Unseen...dmc