I saw
God’s glory a lot this week. It looked something like this:
Monday
Knowing
the answer, I ask Cam anyway, ‘Do you want milk with your rice crispies?’ And
he says, ‘No thanks Mom. The snapping sound sometimes annoys me.’ He only ever
wants sugar. Lots of it. Every day I sprinkle a little less, hoping to wean
him. There’s no fooling him. ‘Mom, is there sugar in my rice crispies? I can’t
hear it crunching.’ Ah well. Praise God for heightened senses.
Angelina
is the homeless-jobless-schizophrenic lady who lives in our street. Everyone
knows her. Everyone accepts that she spends her time lounging on the manicured
lawns of our shady suburb. She irritates me. She yells at our gate for coffee.
She freaks me out because she jabbers and gesticulates madly to imaginary
people. She’s dirty. Scott loves her. He’s playing on the driveway, seeing with
God’s eyes. He calls to her across the street and waves and smiles, ‘Ha-wo
An-geena!’ And he shames me because Jesus died for Angelina, too. I make her
coffee.
Tuesday
Cam
starts acting up. We’re going camping tomorrow. He’s excited at the prospect of
sleeping bags and camp fires but still the tantrums erupt. We’re starting to
see a pattern. This happens every time we go away. He wants to stay in his
pyjamas. He asks if he can pack some of his treasures (like an alarm clock, a
plastic ball and a lanyard from a conference). We ask questions and the truth
tumbles out in tears. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t know what the place
will look like. Ironically, we talk him blindly through the imminent future
with Deo volente confidence.
Wednesday
We
drive north for an hour or so, to a game reserve. It’s not all the internet
swore it would be. The boys see this as a bonus. The long delay at the gate
because there’s no credit card machine and we have no cash simply means they
each get another sucker while we wait in the shade. A flat tyre means helping
Dad do guy stuff. A bright green pool of algae just means more bugs to catch,
more leaves to scoop. Monkeys eating rusks in our tent is just cool.
Scott
wants to hug every animal we see. He’s leaning out the windows, arms open wide
– ‘Hug! Hug zebra!’ I’m strangling him with his t-shirt, trying to restrain
him. We drive back to our camp with the sun red and dusty over the bushveld and
peace seeps slowly in with the darkness. Lying in our beds we listen to the
night. Cam asks, ‘Dad what’s that bird?’ Murray says, ‘Fiery-necked nightjar.’
Cam says, ‘Oh. It sounds like Grampa’s phone.’ Which it does because my dad,
keen birder that he is, has the nightjar’s call as his ringtone.
(We
also forget that we are supposed to be having supper at Murray’s folks tonight.
And there’s God’s glory in their subsequent forgiveness!)
Thursday
We’re
busying ourselves with breakfast and morning ablutions. Scott is calling us
calling us calling us. Eventually I go to him. He’s saying ‘Wino! Wino! Wino!’
And there it is. A rhino. Twenty metres away.
We
get home, chuffed that the boys’ feet are filthy as they should be. We scrub
them back into respectability because their much-adored Uncle Lachlan is
bringing beautiful Analia for dinner. We can’t wait to meet her. The guest room
is immaculate for her. (The playroom sleeper couch is a mess for him.) While
she’s upstairs showering he tells us hush-hush that he’s proposing tomorrow and
we do silent ecstatic screams and then pretend all evening to know nothing.
Wow. God’s glory in fairy tale romances and dreams come true.
At
some point over lasagne or ice-cream Lachlan reminds us that the Mandarin word
for crisis is made up of the symbols for danger and opportunity.
And I think, God shows his glory in language and in the
curveballs of life.
Friday
Cam
and I visit Eugene and his mom, Marjeanne. Eugene is also visually impaired,
and a mini-superhero. Marjeanne chats to me about mainstream schooling and
magnifiers and the strange magnificence that comes with disability. She puts
wind in my sails.
Saturday
I get
to go to a birthday breakfast and a ladies’ retreat while Murray makes tepees
and totem poles in the garden with Chief Running Bear (Cam) and his sidekick
White Eagle (Scott). God shows his glory in the loving sacrifice of a husband
who might quite love to be out on his mountain bike but who gladly loves
instead his little tribe of pretend-pretend Indians.
Tonight
I’m thinking, I love that we can celebrate God in these glimpses of his
goodness. But in a way it’s even more thrilling for me to think that maybe
tonight somewhere over a dark ocean a storm will rage. No one but God will know
or see. And he will take his glory. Maybe tonight somewhere in a dark sleeping
house a tired desperate patient tender mom or dad will get up to hold a baby. No
one but God will know or see. And he will take his glory.
‘God
is the only being in all of existence who can be said to possess inherent
glory. We don’t give it to Him; it is His by virtue of who He is. If no one
ever gave God any praise, He would still be the glorious God that He is,
because He was glorious before any beings were created to worship Him… His
glory is His being – simply the sum of what He is, regardless of what we do or
do not do in recognition of it.’ – John MacArthur
‘God’s
glory is the visible splendour or moral beauty of God’s manifold perfections.
The “glory” of God is the exhibition of His inherent excellence; it is the
external manifestation of His internal majesty. To “glorify God” is to declare,
draw attention to, or publicly announce and advertise His glory… Glory is
the beauty of God unveiled! Glory is the resplendent radiance of His power and
His personality. Glory is all of God that makes God, God, and shows Him to be
worthy of our praise and our boasting and our trust and our hope and our
confidence and our joy! Glory is the external elegance of the
internal excellencies of God. Glory is what you see and experience
and feel when God goes public with His beauty!’ – Sam Storms
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