The Weight of Glory
Here's a simple but (I hope) useful observation: Most of us don't want the glory that has been alotted us. This point seems counterintuitive, and I wouldn't have believed it had I not been brought to such a realization via the back door. But it's true: Most people don't want their share of glory.
But let's not move too quickly in all of this: We want glory all right--and that's the biggest smoke screen of all. Many people live primarily to gain glory for themselves, whether through the eyes of others or according to some standard, some idol, they set up in their minds. What about me? I'm rarely an exception. I want to receive glory for how good-looking I am, I want to be praised for how smart I am, how interesting is my blog, how proactive I am, how studious, how wise, how carefree yet knowing. From my mother, from my father, my siblings, distant relatives I hardly know, teachers at school (whether they speak English or not), the principal, the preacher, the girl who takes my money at the convenience store, the girl who takes my money at the community center (especially her, actually), the crazy children I pass every morning walking to school, and from almost every other human being I ever encounter, I seek praise. I seek glory.
And that's a huge chunk of my life. I may be more cosmopolitan in the group from whom I seek glory, but whether gleaning glory from many or from an elite few, many of you probably run your lives by roughly the same formula. So let me be honest: None of it's real. These hardy, fibrous "Good job" 's, "My, he's so smart!" 's, and "Oh, I'd like to date him" 's, they're nothing--a whim, a whisper, a joke.
What matters in the end is how much correspondence there is between those "Well done" 's and the "Well done, good and faithful servant" we will or will not hear when the last stone hits the water. And the hitch is this: There is no formula for figuring the correspondence between the two--it's completely indeterminate, mystery to its core. (To all except the One who will judge the living and the dead.)
And that's what upsets me so often. Here I am working the floor, raking in the dough on all this good praise, heaping up glory for generations to come--and deep down, I know my purse (my wife's) is completely riddled with holes. Deep down, I know it's all meaningless, even unprofitable.
And still every day, to some degree, is a struggle to put aside the glory that corrodes even as I grasp hold of it, and to seek the glory of which not even the slightest molecule can become tarnished--the glory that has yet to be revealed. The glory I often cast aside.
On a side note, a good amount of the complaining I do comes from the same error: Why is life so hard? Why is it my lot to have to do this or that? Why can't everything just be ideal? I curse the world upon which God intended me as a blessing, because I cannot seem to accept what has been placed upon my shoulders, my crown or accuser, the weight of glory.
Those are my thoughts for tonight.
By the way, I just found out yesterday: My apartment here in Japan is 247 square feet. What a monster!
But let's not move too quickly in all of this: We want glory all right--and that's the biggest smoke screen of all. Many people live primarily to gain glory for themselves, whether through the eyes of others or according to some standard, some idol, they set up in their minds. What about me? I'm rarely an exception. I want to receive glory for how good-looking I am, I want to be praised for how smart I am, how interesting is my blog, how proactive I am, how studious, how wise, how carefree yet knowing. From my mother, from my father, my siblings, distant relatives I hardly know, teachers at school (whether they speak English or not), the principal, the preacher, the girl who takes my money at the convenience store, the girl who takes my money at the community center (especially her, actually), the crazy children I pass every morning walking to school, and from almost every other human being I ever encounter, I seek praise. I seek glory.
And that's a huge chunk of my life. I may be more cosmopolitan in the group from whom I seek glory, but whether gleaning glory from many or from an elite few, many of you probably run your lives by roughly the same formula. So let me be honest: None of it's real. These hardy, fibrous "Good job" 's, "My, he's so smart!" 's, and "Oh, I'd like to date him" 's, they're nothing--a whim, a whisper, a joke.
What matters in the end is how much correspondence there is between those "Well done" 's and the "Well done, good and faithful servant" we will or will not hear when the last stone hits the water. And the hitch is this: There is no formula for figuring the correspondence between the two--it's completely indeterminate, mystery to its core. (To all except the One who will judge the living and the dead.)
And that's what upsets me so often. Here I am working the floor, raking in the dough on all this good praise, heaping up glory for generations to come--and deep down, I know my purse (my wife's) is completely riddled with holes. Deep down, I know it's all meaningless, even unprofitable.
And still every day, to some degree, is a struggle to put aside the glory that corrodes even as I grasp hold of it, and to seek the glory of which not even the slightest molecule can become tarnished--the glory that has yet to be revealed. The glory I often cast aside.
On a side note, a good amount of the complaining I do comes from the same error: Why is life so hard? Why is it my lot to have to do this or that? Why can't everything just be ideal? I curse the world upon which God intended me as a blessing, because I cannot seem to accept what has been placed upon my shoulders, my crown or accuser, the weight of glory.
Those are my thoughts for tonight.
By the way, I just found out yesterday: My apartment here in Japan is 247 square feet. What a monster!
posted by Peter Rice at 5:17 AM
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