The Weight of Glory.

(Ancient well near Arad - Abraham most likely stopped at this spot on his journeys - Israel, 2009).

"The sacred writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination may view in awe the bent form wrestling convulsively under the stars. Possibly not again until One greater than Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit a human soul."

- A.W. Tozer.

...

The Hebrew word for glory is Kavod. It comes from the root word Keved, which means"heavy."

And to me, that is such a perfect word to describe what glory is.

Because not only do we give weight in our lives to the One that deserves glory, but also, to honor him, sometimes it requires us to make weighty decisions - hard sacrifices.

Think about the people in the Bible who went before us - the ones that are written about that God has given us as examples...

 

Elijah. Noah. Moses. Mary. Miriam. Ruth. Esther. Paul. Peter. Abraham. Jesus.

And who better to give us a picture of the weight of what God sometimes requires of us than the two men spoken of in the quote above, Abraham and Jesus?

They were men who walked with God intimately.

They were men of obedience.

They were men willing to sacrifice.

And from both of them, much was required.

 

In fact, the weight of what God asked of these two men was almost more than each of them could bear.

- Abraham, wrestling with his God under the stars, feeling the weight of his love for Isaac battling against the weight of his respect for God.

- Jesus, wrestling with God in the garden, the weight of His life and His fear battling against the weight of His responsibility to His Father.

Both of these men are now known for their righteousness, because in the end, the heaviness of God's glory outweighed any other priority in their lives.

Their obedience (to the very end) shows us that.

Through their choices, God's glory becomes known in even greater depth to those of us who are blessed to come after them and read their stories.

It was not until each man made the choice to allow his own desires to be ripped out and pulled from his heart, not until then could God's glory manifest fully in their lives.

Because God's glory has to take priority and preference over everything else, and that is not easy. Following.God.is.not.easy...in fact, it is the hardest thing a person can choose to do.

He requires much of us.

And so often, the weight of it, the burden of it, is heavy...

But in return for our choice to put God first, an even greater weight,

the weight of His glory,

covers us and surrounds us and is made known.

The blessing comes after the burden. Always.

And I want to wrestle like those great men and women

who went before me.

I want to conquer like my Rabbi.

I want to do my part -

to carry my share of this burden.

I

want

to

feel

the

weight.

The weight of His glory.

Because where His glory is,

there He is also.

...

And He is enough.