I am impatient. I don't like to wait for change to happen. I don't like a slow process or many steps. I want change to happen with a snap of the finger or a blink (oh to be Samantha from Bewitch! wiggle your nose and get what you want, that would be amazing!). Yet I was thrilled several months ago reading this verse in 1 Peter:
Friends, when life gets really difficult, don't jump to the conclusion that God isn't on the job. Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner.
Glory just around the corner? Seriously. I live in a world where 7-11 is just around the corner, Applebees is your neighborhood bar and grill, Wal-Mart has it all and for a bargain, and if that doesn't work, Amazon delivers. Peter is talking about God being around the corner, his Glory? Really? just around the corner? My corner? That sounds too easy?
I would meagerly define God's glory as seeing, hearing, touching, smelling God, Knowing he exists from every pore of your body but that just doesn't even begin to define it. I know in my limited, blinded time on this earth, I have had moments where God has shown me His Glory and I have been moved to tears and trembled in the sight of it. The old Testament says Moses was allowed to see a glimpse of God's glory but to see the face of God would kill a man. I think maybe I have seen a sliver of a sliver of an ant's toe nail of God's glory. Yet it has drawn me in like it's a tornado stirring up everything in it's path. I want to seek it out and find it again and again and again. And when I read that His Glory is just around the corner...well, this makes me want to hunt it, like its' some treasure marked with an x. I want to go running around my block until I run right into it. I want to swim in his glory from head to toe and roll around in it until it takes my breath away. I am excited with the hope of it.
For days after this, I dreamt about a big bowl of liquid glory which engulfed me and comforted me and thrilled me. All I could focus on was His Glory. I was promised it was just around the corner...
God's glory isn't something I earn or deserve. His glory is already paid for and given though the radiance which is His Son on the cross. I get to participate in it. I simply get to walk in a path designed to bring me closer everyday. And this verse reminds me to take comfort that this path is thick and heavy with problems, frustrations, heartbreaks, detours, mountains and mole hills, loses and devastation, catastrophes, disasters, difficulties, impossibilities and improbabilities. But all of those things don't matter.
You know why?
Glory is just around the corner.
Lord,
Thank you for filling me with hope tonight.
Reminding me of the promises a life lived with you is worth.
For wetting my taste buds with glory that is yet to come.
For radiating your Father's love in your death.
I pray I continue to walk the path you have laid out for me.
Help me clinge to the hope of your words.
In your might name.
Amen.
