This verse is what life is all about: God being glorified.
For the longest time though, and still every so often, this whole glorifying God thing gets really abstracted in my mind. Why does he need glory? What is glory? How do we give him glory?
Rather than getting catechismal, I'm too lazy right now anyways, as it's 3PM after a busy labor-day weekend, I'm simply going to write and see what happens (hey, that's what I usually do anyways).
I believe that God can and is being glorified all the time. As I look out the window at the 3pm summer sunlight hitting the well-manicured lawns where I work, I can't help but think that it's we humans, rather than nature, who are out of sink with this whole glory thing.
We want our glory right? And I know that I get so busy trying to accomplish my goals and achieve my own personal salvation that I often barely cast a sideways glance at God's glory.
This happened just a couple of days ago. I was out jumping my bike on some dirt-jumps (or sand jumps, since I live in central Florida). I've made in a some secluded woods near our house. And I became so focused on me and perfecting my jump, that I was aware of a deep betrayal and unhappiness washing over my soul. It felt like despair.
While I don't think there's anything wrong in losing yourself in an activity, I feel there's two losses of self. One is a grasping for perfection or satisfaction from something or someone - loss of self. And the other is being so into what you are doing that you simply forget yourself - loss of self.
I was loosing myself the first way. I was not allowing everything around me, the noisy bugs, the gently swaying grass, the nearby lake and its stillness, the mossy and knotted trees, the bright white central Floridian sand, the cool-ish breeze (it only ever gets cool-ish here), the nearby alligator (I know he's around somewhere) the exercise and bike jumping to achieve their purpose in me and through me. In other words I was surrounded by glory but instead was pursuing self. I was shrinking.
And I'm growing kind of tired of shrinking. I'm tired of taking God's goodness for granted. I'm tired of being unthankful. I'm tired of winding up frustrated because I refuse to give weight to God.
But in the verse above I'm reminded, that even with my own frustration, I'm still being selfish. To stop shrinking and start growing again I've got to praise God. To praise God is my greatest privilege. To catch God's reflection in the world, through his word and through the Spirit, and to radiate him out into the world is my greatest honor, my greatest glory. My glory is God's and God's glory is mine.
May God give his name glory. We need it.
