Rethinking

Last Monday, I did as our minister had asked the day before, and asked God to show me His glory. Taking a cue from Moses on the mountain as he dealt with God and asked the same question, I too asked God for that favor. If you read my blog of a couple of days ago, you know that my morning didn’t turn into much of a glorifying experience. Fixing the page system, cleaning up a urine-soaked carpet, and boiling my coffee were just part of the things of the morning that didn’t turn out as I had planned. I began thinking again, as I have many times past, that God either doesn’t care or just doesn’t do things like that anymore.
However, as I think about my Monday morning and the times I said “Lord, show me your glory,” I have to think that maybe God answered in the affirmative that day after all.
Ephesians 3:21 says, “To Him (God) be glory in the church through Jesus Christ…” The glory of God is if I read this verse correctly, in the church; that called out group of people that God has set apart (sanctified), reconciled to Himself (justified), and which now and forevermore in eternities both past and future (the eternal present) is glorified and glorifies through the operation of the Eternal Son (Jesus Christ).
So what did it take for God to sanctify and reconcile us? Basically, God had to clean up the mess that we made. We all have made a mess of our lives and our relationship with Him. We have sinned (fallen short of the mark) and we have estranged ourselves from our Eternal Father and Eternal Family. The justice of God demands that a price be exacted from each who sins. “For the wages of sin is death,’ the great Apostle Paul says.
That Great Apostle John says, however, that “God so loved the world that He gave h is only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” God provided the payment for our sins. God provided the means to clean up our messes. God did all that needed to be done to be able to present the church to Himself as a bride is presented to a groom (Revelation 21). God’s glory, which I asked Him to show me, is His cleaning up of my messes and my sins. It was dirty, stinky, awful work, to say the least. But it is done.
I now am left with but a question: When I cleaned up the mess made by that resident on the floor that Monday morning, in the midst of all else that was going on, was that God showing me His glory? “I came not to be served, but to serve.”