O Come, All Ye Faithful Verse 2

Sing, choirs of angels

Sing in exultation!

Sing all ye citizens of heaven above.

Glory to God, all glory in the highest.

O come let us adore Him (3X), Christ the Lord. 

I had the pleasure of singing this along with the IWA Choir at their concert last night (after which my Internet failed).  That'll put you in the Christmas mood instantly.

Again I can't help seeing the second coming previewed here.  The shepherds sent down to greet Christ in the manger are the only mortal men in history to have a true preview of that day.  The heavenly hosts blasting their heavenly music in welcome and glory of God.

What a sight it must have been.

And the things about glory is -- it is also frightening and even terrible in our eyes.  I've thought a lot on this most recent round of blogs about how much we stand to lose when the world changes and how much faith and hope it can take to trust that the world will be better.  But losing our fear of glory...that part seems like one of the things that makes it easy again.

Let me clarify a little bit here.  We accuse people of wanting glory, and I think we all have a taste for glory.  At least of the "one moment in the sun" variety that can stand safely in our memories.  Not all, but I think most of us would realize the fearfulness of perpetual glory for ourselves.  And that's one fear we'd lose.

But more importantly, I think we'd lose our instinctual fear of glory in others, even and perhaps especially God.  How many times have we seen the story play out?  Sometimes the fearful ones are like the older son in "The Prodigal Son" but quite often they are the heroes being Rightfully Cautious.

And even in God, we fear His Glory at times.  Isn't that where "God-fearing" comes from?  Because it seems really upsetting if it means "constantly fearful of God's punishment".

It reminds me of an article (making a very different point) I read yesterday which talked about how we would rather believe in a world where nothing is random -- even terrible things that happen to us, even when that makes us think it's our fault, we prefer the non-random world.

But I wonder -- do we?  Do we really?  In practice, prefer a world controlled by an Almighty Power?  Are we hardwired to trust in God?  Is that why the hands-off, free will policy is so necessary that's worth the price in wars and death and petty cruelties?

So that is a barrier to God I look forward to watching fall on Judgment Day.  In the meantime, I suppose all we can do is take one brick at a time out of alignment and wait for a section to fall.