Living the Glory Days

A sliver of moon rocked on the crest of sky awakening. 

The morning star rose to shimmer for a brief moment. Its beauty soon to fade in the light of day.

Wind, cold from the north, sent a shiver down my spine, shaking me awake as I stopped for a moment to gaze at the wonder. My flesh compelled me to get going, to power through to the day ahead. But why miss this? Will there ever be another morning so terribly beautiful?

Wonder aches because, almost always, it’s fleeting. We can never quite hold it. Yet, wonder is the path we often take to find our to way when the world is cloaked in darkness.

Wonder moments are stepping-stones. They move us forward toward an eternal destiny----grace gifts lifting the soul in the dark of night.

For days now, I have been rising early, slipping out before dawn to make my way to the house where my Dad lives, out on the farm where he was raised.

I grew up under the trees that greet me each morning. They nod in the cold wind, giant silhouettes against a peach backdrop rising.  

Gravel grumbles under the weight of my SUV. Tires rumble over the cattle guards and I pull in at 6:30. It’s been our routine the past week or so. We go together to his early appointments, part of the treatment regime necessary before a new round of chemotherapy next week.

Sometimes I don’t remember what day it is, and I certainly lose track of the date, but this is what I do remember:

Everyday is a gift---even when it is a hard day.

Not many years ago, a precious friend was packing up her house and moving hours away. Her path had crossed mine for a short time. God was taking her on the next leg of her journey. I stopped by her house to see her off.

Looking into her beautiful smiling eyes, I spoke a blessing over her, reminded her she was living the glory days. God would use her mightily. This I knew.

She moved away and she made friends. She gave of herself when others were suffering, and then, a doctor discovered a cyst on her brain.

She prayed. I prayed. Only heaven knows how many prayed?

There was surgery. She woke up from the procedure and she was living her glory days.

She still is.

It is hard living in a world where suffering seems to trump glory, where the bad happens to the good.

Just as I saw Venus shining bright just before dawn, we must see glory in the dark. 

Venus was still there after the sunrise. It's light was overtaken by the brilliance of the sun.

Glory is just beyond the horizon, coming out of the east to greet us. Soon we will be overtaken by another brilliant Light.

We wait with expectation, living by faith in what we cannot see.

Glory has risen. 

Glory is rising. 

The earth spins on its axis and takes it’s laps around the sun. The moon waxes and wanes. And at the appointed time, a trumpet will sound and the Morning Star will rise at the breaking of a New Day dawning.

(Jesus said…) “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:3)

God became man, laid down his glory to enter the darkness of the world. 

The path to glory was paved with suffering. But it all began with wonder.

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

Whatever our circumstances, in Christ, we are living the glory days.