My husband has taught me to love trees. He has always loved them, enjoyed them, and seen them in ways that I have had to learn. To begin to see a tree, I like to run my hands along its bark. I try to wait and watch as its leaves give shape to the breeze through their gentle flaps and stirrings. I follow where it points me, as it gestures up and around, sometimes pulling me along in its rush heavenward, sometimes slowing and eddying in an intricate tracery of branch and stick. Like columns and arches and rose windows, it teaches me about someone else, something other – and yet it is here, anchored and rooted, moored right where I am.
What if glory was not something intangible, golden and shining and ephemeral, existing somewhere out there, probably up there, with a God who is far off and content to stay there? What if, instead, glory is in something being made plain, someone seen? What if glory is not in the pageantry as we often think of it, but in the truth of the encounter? What if glory lies eager and waiting to spring forth when someone is known and cherished as he actually and truly is? In such actuality and truth the perceiver, the receiver, the selfsame lover and beloved can barely stand, barely hold on with his hands or in her heart.
“Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.”
Thornton Wilder, Our Town
When people encountered Jesus on the city corridors of Jerusalem, the dusty back-roads of Galilee, the cramped seasides and sinking ships and upper rooms – I would guess that there was not a lot of pageantry about him. He was not stunningly handsome, striking in his attire or someone looking for fame. He spoke plainly, though his words were often curious and confusing. He healed people who were sick and suffering, and then told them not to tell anyone. He taught in churches, and people marveled at his authority, his mere daring to say things in such a way as if he meant them and knew what he was talking about. He told simple stories about sons and fathers, landowners and tenants, seeds and coins and bread. He died near two others, one angry, one sorry.
“As the fir-tree lifts up itself with a far different need from the need of the palm-tree, so does each man stand before God, and lift up a different humanity to the common Father…In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter…From this it follows that there is a chamber also – (O God, humble and accept my speech) – a chamber in God himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man – out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made – to reveal the secret things of the Father.”
George MacDonald: An Anthology 356 Readings, “The New Name”
Jesus is speaking today, inviting us to be who we are, what we are, and where we are – and in this way, to give him glory. He invites us to rest in the selves we have been given, and to somehow begin to offer these true and simple selves to one another for the sake of making him out, as a shadowy dimness begins to clarify into a figure and a face with each torch newly lit – through the body you inhabit, the brain you have, the sensitivities you cannot shake or stamp out, the strengths and the beauties with which you dwell, the glories of who God has made you to be – you, and no other. The very things that are ordinary and familiar about you, the image of your face in a mirror, the sound of your voice, the weight of your head in your hands, the way your eyes smile and squint, the parts that are tender and afraid, cherished and exiled, the days that don’t seem to matter, the roots that are never seen, the leaves that wither and fall, the branches that are lopped off, the trees that are wholly cut down.
And so we clap our hands with the trees, we cry out with the stones, we declare that we are free to be an ear and not an eye, we are minted and rendered unto the one whose image we bear, and we point the way to the kingdom like the child in Jesus’ midst – we have been given a story to tell, and we tell it season by season, day by day, moment by moment.
some questions to hold
- As you make room for some of the younger parts of yourself, what do you notice about them? How do they reflect God’s goodness, justice, mercy, delight, love, and passion?
- What parts have learned that it is not okay, not enough, or not safe to be who you are? What was that learning process like?
- What is one small way that you could offer who you are to someone else, while also allowing them to respond by offering who they are to you?
If you’d like to continue on this journey with me, please sign up below to get email updates when I post something new. I am very grateful for the time you give to reading these, and would be glad to hear any feedback or comments you have about how we can risk a next, slow step toward Jesus together.
– Amanda
connectinghope.art 