Glory Glory!

II CORINTHIANS


There are some days when I am struck by how meaningless life is. I wake up, hounded by the routine of my thoughts and anxieties - the same cycle of guilt, confusion and rationalization begins in my first moments of consciousness. I am sure that all of my readers, and likely all of humanity, can relate on some level to the stagnation of life.

Maybe it is your third year at the same job, with the same coworkers, the same pace, the same tasks.
Maybe it is the loneliness that characterizes your goings to and from school, errands, and home.
Maybe it is the fatigue from holding yourself up to an invisible standard and realizing that you still have not reached it.
Maybe it is the apathy which colors your perception, has numbed you to any excitement, and has claimed you as a cynic.

These feelings are real, they are legitimate and trying to battle them is tiring. Some may not be as contemplative and so may not dwell on or analyze these emotions, but they are still true. All that is meaningless, is meaningless. To say otherwise is absurd and I am not going to try to write meaning into tasks or happiness into melancholy.

The trouble is "we were meant to live for so much more" (Quote: Switchfoot). There is a Magnificence in life that transforms our monotony into melodrama. There is not any independent meaning in our unvaried, uneventful biographies, but behind or beneath them there is that which is enthralling.

Every religion recognizes this heartfelt need to live for more, and offers some way to access this glory -- whether it be hours of meditation to reach Nirvana, sacrificing your life to please Allah, or a lifetime or being good to get to Heaven. Christianity also admits a desire to live for that which is great and glorious. Yet we recognize a problem in this design:

In the Old Testament, Moses went on top of Mount Sinai and God's glory came to him. When he came down from the mountain, bearing God's Commandments for the Israelite people, his face was radiant because he had communed with Majesty. He had to wear a veil over his face because the people could not look at it.

The trouble is that often, this glory is veiled to us. We look at our own inadequacies and shy away from anything better than us; we are comfortable enough in our fear and it seems easier to not believe that anything greater exists. We don't realize the possibility or the potential in daily life, don't think that we could ever draw near to some invisible worth behind our lives. We are tired of searching for meaning.

We can not see the glory in this life because we are separated from it by our humanity -- not just the fear of our failings, but our failings themselves. We can not see anything better than ourselves because we don't deserve to, we aren't good enough to see it. The good news is that through Jesus Christ we no longer have to blindly reach for purpose in our lives. The person of Jesus Christ enables us to draw near to this glory, to praise this glory, to behold it and allow it to transform us. Christ pulls us out of our condemning thoughts, out of our rationalizations and purposeless existence.

Christ covers for our failings and removes the veil between us and Glory. II Corinthians says "Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face...for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away." Christianity promises a life that has meaning and is relevant because through Christ we can know a Glorious God.