Glorify

We sing things like “glory to God” and we pray things like “God be glorified in our lives.” Glory is a super churchy word but what does it look like to give God glory, in modern terms?

Well, maybe I’ll try to figure it out by thinking how people give glory to each other.

I’m imagining a woman who tells her friends that she loves her husband because he is such a good man. Maybe that is giving him glory. Imagine your coworker saying he was so eager to complete an assignment for his boss because his boss takes good care of him. Imagine being a kid’s teacher when he tells you he will not cheat on a test because his daddy taught him up right. It seems like professing and acting on how cool you think someone is might be giving them glory?

If we saw someone at a party go up to the lonely, zitty kid in the corner to befriend him, wouldn’t we say that was pretty cool? And wouldn’t we think Christ was cool if we found out the kid was doing it because he was a Christian?

And what if you asked the happiest person you know why they are so happy. And to respond they drew close and whispered in your ear, “Because my god has given me abundant life.” Now a God like that would be cool.

Sometimes I think I make God seem pretty uncool by being an uptight Christian and quietly keeping my God to myself. But maybe I can bring glory to God, like we’re built to do, by acting in a way that shows how good I think he is and telling others who the giver is when another one of his abundant gifts falls on me.

Raw Spoon