What does Paul mean when he says, "The Resurrection is going to swallow up the suffering and evil you're going through right now"? Here's a very imperfect illustration from my own life. Many years ago I had a horrible nightmare. I'm not sure if the dream came from something I ate or a movie I'd watched, but I usually don't retell this dream with many details because it was really an awful dream. I dreamt my entire family had been slaughtered. But then I woke up, and my entire family was right there. I really love my family, and when I went to sleep that night, before the nightmare, they were all around me. But when I woke up after the dream, the nightmare in which I thought I had lost them, I got them back again. I couldn't even look at them without crying—for sheer joy.

What had happened? Having gotten them back after losing them, made the experience of having them infinitely greater. It's almost like the experience of losing them had been swallowed up by the experience of having them, so that it was infinitely more precious.

That is a dim hint of what the resurrection of Christ means to us. If his resurrection happened—and it did—that means our resurrection's going to happen. And that means that everything sad and horrible is going to be brought up into our future glory and resurrection and make it infinitely better than it would have been if we had never had any of those experiences. And that's the final and ultimate defeat of suffering and death.