Longing For Glory

Lately I’ve been longing for glory.

A glimpse of what the weight would be like, a weight I would full willingly carry.

Have you had the gift of watching The Prince of Egypt? Have you too, been enraptured by the scene of Moses encountering I AM in the fiery yet unburnt bush? Do you, like me, discount or normalize the scene, the miracle of it all? A supernatural act that the LORD God himself would condescend to speak to his creation through a mere bush?

When I speak of miracle, I do not only speak of the plant’s undestroyed anatomy, but of God’s willingness, in infinite grace and love, to speak through a plant he designed? Likely, it wasn’t even a pretty bush; after all, Moses was probably in an arid region.

And yet,

he showed up anyway. And the wonders that he revealed to his people.

With the might of his hand and the majestic sovereignty of his being, he parted a sea for people who would later complain and grumble to go back to their captivity—which he knew, full well. These people would make a golden calf made from their own petty hands to embody the God they could not see. Because they were weak, their spiritual eyes darkened by their mistrust.

And yet,

he rescued them from the hand of Pharaoh, even before they maligned God to his face by crafting some false representation.

He used a broken man, an exiled prince, to bring thousands of people out of Egypt, one of the mightiest, if not the mightiest kingdom of the ancient world at the time.

You could say that Moses’ calling came to him long before he was approached by God out in the desert. Perhaps when he was just a babe, being rescued by the Queen of Egypt, his adopted mother. Perhaps it was when the scales of his eyes were lifted and he realized the oppression of the slaves.

Can you imagine the beating of the whips? The blows which lacerated the backs of children, young women? Strong men broken under the sneers and name-calling of the savage Egyptian slavemasters. Pools of blood like gashing wounds in the streets of Egypt’s great city, where slaves were left for dead.

And long before this, before what Moses may have seen from the comfort and opulence of the royal palace, the weeping of the mothers as they’re babies were thrown to the unmerciful crocodiles and dark waters of the Nile river. Can you hear them? The screaming, the tearing of hair, the women scrambling out of their beds, stumbling after the midwives responsible for murdering the sons of the Israelite nation, calling after their children. On their knees, beating their breasts, calling to a God in the sky who turns away from their agonies.

In all of this, there is a hope for glory, for renewal. There is a hope for God’s glory. The glory that comes from the great I AM—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The One who was, who is, and is yet to come.

Glorious indeed was the presence of the Angel of Death among the might of the Egyptians. Glorious the plundering of the Egyptians by their own slaves. And most marvelous of all, the sea walls rising to the right and to the left, dry land appearing where once there was a sea deeper than could be measured. I love the depiction in the movie of gigantic fish, schools of smaller sea creatures, turtles, swimming inside the solid walls of water on either side as God guided his people with the staff of Moses through to the other side.

I desire glory like that. Don’t you? And what of the majesty, the brilliance and holiness, the fear, of the tabernacle, the meeting place of God and man?

Weeping, I find myself on my knees, hands once more outstretched toward the heavens with the subsequent beat of my breast: “Woe is me, a sinner!”, desiring glory. To touch the hem of His garment would be enough to last a hundred lifetimes, in a world where our sin separates us.

Oh, what it would be like to stand before the great throne of Paradise and throw myself to the verdant ground beneath my feet, to pour fragrant oil on my Lord’s feet and wipe them with the hair created by Him. Surely, that would be glorious.

I think that is what I seek when I attempt to write. When I hike to a peak and gaze away, out into the unknown. In a conversation with a beloved friend. I never find it. There are glimpses, there are furtive teasers. But nothing like the fullness of God’s magnificence.

And so I long for it. Always longing for glory, in every moment of every day, chasing it through streams of sunlight, stars in the night sky, and laughter with others. Even in tears, I catch it, watching it slip away again into the ether.

Someday, I will get to touch it. Someday, when this life has finished it’s course.

The Angel Standing in the Sun, JMW Turner