Friday, December 7, 2007

You make everything glorious

What is glory?

Christians and sports fans throw that word around... I think the sport fans are the ones that know what they're talking about. (Winning the national championship in 2005 was glorious... a good football game/battle of the gridiron-- that's glorious.) Christians are only trying to have a word for God. We call him glorious; we talk about living for his glory; we "see God's glory" in creation. Well, how do I know whether or not I'm thinking of creation's glory while I'm referring to God's glory? Because I don't know what the heck his glory is. It's too big; too broad of a concept for my brain.

I think about light and shiny castles and thrones and jewels. But is that beauty and not glory? Are they the same? Do I equate the two? Can something ugly or boring also be glorious?

Donald Miller writes in Searching for God Knows What that our economies of beauty and money and power are man-made... that that's not what God considers glorious, or worthy. Maybe "worthy" is a better word for the concept I'm trying to talk about. That we as humans try to validate ourselves by comparisons against others in invalid currencies.

So why does my heart leap at beauty? Why do I desire power and influence? Why do I care how others perceive me?

Are these things still part of 'glory'? God has been praised for his beauty... but "there was nothing in His appearance that we should desire him." Jesus was not goodlooking!

More later.

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