Living Story Grace

John Haskins depicts the joy of a "holiday by the sea."

^“12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. ¹³ Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ¹⁴ And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Col. 3:12-14

A good blogger doesn’t ask people to read more than a paragraph or two. I’m not a good blogger today:).

I’ve been revisiting my tattered copy of John Piper’s Desiring God, in which he calls us to revisit an essential but often left-out part of the Westminster Catechism: “What is the chief end of [humankind]?” “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Piper asks us to reconsider how enjoying God glorifies God, and begins by quoting the following portion of C.S. Lewis’ great sermon, The Weight of Glory. I promise you the challenge here is worth the five minutes it will take you to read it. I even broke one long paragraph up into shorter sections:). Read it and ask yourself — what can I learn about glorying God by enjoying God?

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love.

You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.

I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“The weight of glory is worth the wait.” That’s a Scotty Smith-ism — or at least I first heard it from him.

As Advent arrives, I am waiting on glory. I am trying to pay attention to it when I see it (the word, the concept, the demonstrations.) Several days ago, I was reading about the glory of the Lord and its connection to not showing partiality. Listen to what John Stott says in his commentary on James 2:1:

Moses asked the Lord, “I pray thee, show me thy glory.”

“In reply, the Lord, ever prompt to meet the needs of those he loves, promises: ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name.”

“…the Lord in effect answered by saying, ‘You will certainly see my glory, for I will come to you myself, reveal my essential goodness and spell out my very nature to you.’” (John Stott, James commentary).

Let us look for the glory of the Lord in this season. He has promised to reveal it, and He has kept His promise.

“In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel.“

Glory troubles us. When we experience moments of intimacy our souls were made for, we tremble in the fragility of it. We struggle to sustain it or we move quickly to destroy it.

We now enter a season that is all about “waiting on GLORY.” I am meditating on this word, noticing whenever I see it in the Scriptures, singing the lines of hymns that name it over and over.

Why? Because the word “glory” in Hebrew means WEIGHTY. Because for so many years, the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays brought with them the weight of sorrow. Because I believe the “weight of glory is worth the wait.”

Advent is all about “waiting” on glory to arrive. (Except, as my youngest son reminded me two days ago, “We already know the light DID come”:) (Indeed, Robert). I am challenging myself to live in the joy of tastes of glory and to wait for the weight of glory. If you’re in on this one, I’d love some concrete ideas about what that might look like for you (and me:).

“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”