Glory

“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, and You exalt Yourself as head over all.”  1 Chronicles 29:11

Glory – Our western culture pushes God into categories governed by the Greek mind.  We think of God in terms of logic and rationale.  We end up with descriptions of God as omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.  All true, but all sterile.  David knows God in an entirely different way.  David’s God is amazing in deeds, awesome in power, and wonderfully beautiful.  That’s the word we translate “glory”.  It is tiph’arah, a word that is used to describe beautiful clothing, the beauty of wisdom, the beauty of crowns and God’s splendor. 

Victor Hamilton notes that the Bible has many different words for “beauty”.  They are found in passages like Isaiah 28:5, Exodus 28:2, Deuteronomy 26:19, Isaiah 64:11 and Psalm 96:6.  Why so many different Hebrew words for the idea of beauty?  Perhaps it’s because the Hebrew mind saw the world as the artistry of God, not the production of a supreme logic.  God’s creativity brought forth a world filled with beauty and it just couldn’t be captured in a single word. 

We translate this Hebrew expression as “glory” because the beauty that God is reveals the glory that He has.  It is His world.  And it is intended to glorify Him.  After all, it’s His signature on the canvas.

This should cause us to pause.  We are part of that beautiful display of God’s glorious work.  His signature is at the bottom of the canvas of our lives.  But unlike paintings on the walls of museums, we are living canvases.  So the question comes:  does the art of my life proclaim the glory of the painter?

David proclaimed to the people that the beautiful God was his God.  He wanted his life to reflect that beauty. 

Do you stand with David, telling the world that your God is beautiful and has painted beauty into you?