The Grist of Glory

From John 8 – 54 Jesus answered, “If I honor Myself, My honor is nothing. It is My Father who honors Me, of whom you say that He is [o]your God. 55 Yet you have not known Him, but I know Him. And if I say, ‘I do not know Him,’ I shall be a liar like you; but I do know Him and keep His word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”

"Where there is danger," decrees Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, "there may be glory."

In John 8, Jesus is facing pressing danger and thick, personal hostility. The writer in me always wonders, what was His facial expression? Verses 54 through 56 give us a clue by allowing us into His thoughts from which words and facial expression flowed. He is tapping into REJOICING by thinking about those who did rejoice and still do.

Abraham, Jesus reminds us, looked on the day in which Jesus His Descendent and Progenitor goes unrecognized among the Abrahamic heirs and is glad to see the day. Looking on, Abraham's worship is apparently that irrepressible.

Is ours? If the glory that is within us by God's grace provokes even mild hostility, how far away is our gladness? Have we matured in Christ, and Edward Gibbon as they are like on this point, to see the continuity in danger and glory, prompts for pleading prayer, and grist for rejoicing? Are predecessors in the faith are glad. So shall we be.

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