Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Today's reading titled The Dwindles was written by Adam Holes.

It started with a tickle in my throat.

Uh-oh, I thought.

That tickle turned out to be influenza, and that

was just the beginning of bronchial affliction. Influenza morphed into whooping cough. Yes,

that whooping cough, and that turned into pneumonia. Eight weeks of torso-racking coughing,

it's not called whooping cough for nothing, has left me humbled.

I don't think of myself as old, but I'm old enough to start thinking about heading in that direction.

A member of my small group at church has a funny name for the health issues that assail us as we age, the dwindles, but there's nothing funny about

dwindling's work in action. In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul too wrote in his own way about the dwindles.

That chapter chronicles the persecution he and his team endured. Fulfilling his mission had taken a heavy toll. Outwardly, we are wasting

away, he admitted. But even as his body failed, from age, persecution, and harsh conditions,

Paul held tightly to his sustaining hope. Inwardly, we are being renewed day by day.

These light and momentary troubles, he insisted, can't compare to what awaits, an eternal

glory that far outweighs them all.

Even as I write tonight, the dwindles claw insistently at my chest, but I know that in

my life and that of anyone who clings to Christ,

they'll not have the last word.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 7 through 18.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but

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