Peggy Noonan, writing for The Wall Street Journal, comments on a scene in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. The movie is about the Battle of the Bakara Market in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. In this particular scene, the actor Tom Sizemore, in the role of a hard-bitten, hard-core U.S. Army Ranger colonel, is in command of a small convoy of Humvees trying to get back to base with mortar and rocket fire exploding all round. In this violent vortex, the colonel guy stops the convoy, brings some wounded on board, throws a dead driver out of the driver's seat and yells at a bleeding sergeant who's standing in shock nearby:

Colonel: Get into that truck and drive.
Sergeant: But I'm shot, Colonel.
Colonel: Everybody's shot, get in and drive.

Noonan is struck by those words: "Everybody's shot." They suggest a metaphor for life. Everyone has taken a hit, everyone's been hurt. We're all walking wounded.

She goes on to cite the case of Rosie O'Donnell, who more often than not is likely to be referring again to the fact that she lost her mother when she was a child. "This of course is very sad," Noonan reports, "and Rosie has spoken of its sadness very often, and with a great whoosh of self-regard. Her sympathy for her loss made me think the other day: She doesn't really know that other people lost their mothers when they were young. She doesn't really know that some people never even had mothers. She doesn't know everybody's been shot."

The apostle Paul affirms the same truth. Everyone suffers, but, he adds, the sufferings "of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (8:18). He even argues that inanimate creation "groans," awaiting that day of future redemption.

For Norman Sleep, a professor of geophysics at Stanford, who has presented his theory to the American Geophysical Union, the travail of creation is very real. The Stanford University scientist says that the Earth may have been repeatedly pummeled by asteroids between 3.5 and 4.5 billion years ago, snuffing out all early life. He argues that there may have been long periods during which life repeatedly spread across the globe, only to be nearly annihilated by the impact of large asteroids.

Just when your life-form is beginning to make some progress ‹ BAM! ‹ an asteroid knocks you back to the first chapter of Genesis.

The early Earth, Sleep says, may have been "an interrupted Eden" ‹ a planet where life repeatedly evolved and diversified, only to be sent back to square one by asteroids 10 or 20 times wider than the one that hastened the dinosaurs' demise. When the surface of the Earth finally became inhabitable again, thousands of years after each asteroid impact, the survivors would have emerged from their hiding places and spread across the planet ‹- until another asteroid struck and the whole cycle was repeated.

Bummer.

It's just a theory, granted. But it's a reminder that it's tough to live a meaningful life when you're shot, or when you live in an interrupted Eden ‹ that is, a place where you know that at any time you might get knocked back to square one.

The apostle Paul saw that periodic poundings were part of "the sufferings of this present time," and that "the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now" (Romans 8:18, 22). He wouldn't have been surprised by news that people were being pummeled, because he himself was forced to endure imprisonments and floggings, beatings and a stoning. "Three times I was shipwrecked," he reports to his fellow Christians; "for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked" (2 Corinthians 11:25-27).

When it comes to enduring extreme hardship, Paul is hard-core: He talked the talk and walked the walk.

But in his letter to the Romans, he doesn't so much whine about today's sufferings as focus on future glory. Paul isn't interested in grousing about the interrupted Eden he's experiencing on Earth ‹ instead, he sets his sights on the fully restored and refurbished Eden that he anticipates enjoying in God's heavenly kingdom. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time," he says, "are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (v. 18).

The key for Paul is that God is at work in the middle of all this suffering, working to bring us to our true destiny, and to free the world itself from its bondage to decay. The whole process is like a birth, one that involves intense pain and moaning and "groaning in labor pains" as a baby is being delivered, but one that has a truly glorious outcome. Sure, we "groan inwardly while we wait for adoption," he concludes, but it is in hope that we are saved (vv. 22-24).

Our hope is that God is working actively and intensely against the powers of death, even as we get pounded by a variety of forces. God is constantly undermining the ability of evil to separate, alienate, discourage and destroy us, and we hitch our hope to God's promise of a new heaven and a new earth, where "Death will be no more; [and] mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away" (Revelation 21:4).

It's Eden, uninterrupted.

Theologian Amy Plantinga Pauw invites us to practice resistance to the powers of death and destruction as we hope for this new kingdom. She urges resistance, active resistance, as a sign of our Christian hope. She tells the story of worship services in Latin America, in which protests against unjust deaths often form a part of the liturgy. In worship, the names of the deceased are read off one by one, names of persons who have often died brutally and tragically. At the reading of each name, the congregation exclaims, "Presente!"

These loved ones are not gone, they are "Presente!" Present and accounted for! Their fellow Christians refuse to accept violent death as the last word on them. As part of what Scripture describes as "so great a cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1), these persons are declared present to the living community of faith.

How is this possible? Only through God's gift of life, a gift that triumphs over war, abduction, rape, abandonment and even that last and most horrifying enemy ‹ death.

We perform an act of true conviction and endurance and hope whenever we climb to our feet after we have been pounded by personal asteroids. It is an act of true faith to get up and shout, "Presente!" ‹ to make a bold statement of our belief that suffering is never the final word when God is at work in the world.

As people who are present to each other, and present to the goodness of God, we can count ourselves as children of God and joint heirs of God's promises, along with Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul points out that we suffer along with Christ "so that we may also be glorified with him" (v. 17). Our pains are never completely pointless if they bring us closer to the one who suffered on the cross for the salvation of the world.

Don't misunderstand. This is not to say that God desires our suffering, or that God somehow enjoys watching us get pummeled and pounded. No, the Lord invites us to join him in working to free the world from its bondage to decay, and to do whatever we can to overcome those forces that can separate, alienate, discourage or destroy us. We may suffer as we do God's work of justice and reconciliation in this world, but suffering is not going to be the final word when we make it to the Lord's eternal Eden.

As we do this heavenly work, we are never forced to work alone. The Spirit of God "helps us in our weakness," assists us in our praying and intercedes for us "according to the will of God" (vv. 26-27). This holy power leads us and guides us, comforts us and abides with us. In fact, it is nothing less than the Spirit of God that constantly reminds us that we are children of God, "and if children," says Paul, "then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ" (v. 17).

We're heirs ‹ heirs with Christ. Heirs of a world that is constantly being pummeled by the asteroids of economic instability, terrorism, warfare, domestic violence, hunger and disease. Heirs of a world so in need of acts of generosity, love, peace, protection, nourishment and healing.

But that's not all. We're also heirs of everlasting life in a kingdom that is out of this world, a heavenly home that God is preparing for us and for all who believe. We may still get pounded here on Earth, but as we're pelted by hardship we know we can survive, and even thrive, trusting that anything we suffer now is going to be wiped away by the glory to come.

We can work and pray for the healing of this hurting world, always inspired by our vision of the world that is to come: an Eden that is uninterrupted and eternal.