Thursday, December 26, 2002

and we have beheld the glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father...
...no one has ever seen God but the Child, who is in the bosom of the Mother, has made God known. John 1:14b and 18

We have seen God in the glory of the incarnation, in the One whom God sent to show us God. In this Christmas season, glory shines all around us and we are filled with wonder and awe.

Glory is a hard word to define. It is easier to play a word association game with it. What words come to your mind when you hear "glory?" Try a few! Definition is hard because glory is an aspect of God, and God, of course, is beyond all words, beyond our human concepts. The best definition of glory I know is that glory is that part of God that we CAN see, feel, and apprehend - the glimpses we get of who God is. We can never see God, the Bible tells us, but God is revealed in many ways if only our eyes are opened to see. Incarnation tells us that God's glory is seen in the ordinary, which no longer is ordinary, but a mask for the holy.

In Old Testament times God was revealed in fire and cloud, in starry sky and mighty wind, in a still small voice and the parting of the Red Sea, in prophet's word and priest's reading of the law. In New Testament times God is revealed in Jesus Christ, one like us and like God, who shows in all He says and does, but most clearly in who He is, who God is and what God desires of us.

After the forgiveness and love we see in the face of Jesus dying on the cross, the life and hope of resurrection morning, and the triumph and transcendence of ascension, we ask, with the early Christians, how the glory of God can still be revealed in our time. Ireneaus, in the first years of the second century, came up with an answer: men and women, fully alive, such are the glory of God!

And so we are the glory of God today. That's a sobering and challenging thought! Being the glory of God is almost unthinkable! It is not a work that we can do, of that we're sure. But it is work that God calls us to and which God can do in and through us. God reveals Godself through ordinary women and men and has throughout the ages. What is required of us is that we open ourselves to God, wholly and completely, and allow God to change us into the glory God wants to reveal through us. What a calling this is! It is the work of a lifetime, and each day we must recommit ourselves to be open, receptive, pliable, waiting upon God, and living no longer as ourselves, but as Christ who lives in us.

The Greek word for glory is "doxa" and for word is "logos." Doxology means "glory words." We are called to be doxologies, fully alive, praising our Maker, truly the glory of God!

Prayer: Shine in us and through us, O God of Glory, conforming us to your image through Jesus Christ, in whose steps we would walk. Amen

Hazelyn McComas

All contents copyright 2002 by the Wisconsin Chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Permission is granted to United Methodist congregations, individuals and groups to reproduce and distribute this devotional without charge. All other use requires the advance permission of the editor.