There is a weight to glory that may not be apparent when one sets out on a quest for glory. But the weight is there, nevertheless, and will ultimately crush the one who seeks for personal glory – maybe not this year or next, but ultimately the weight of glory will be too great to bear.
The desire for personal glory is not a phenomenon that has plagued the world only in the last two or three or ten years. It has been around in one form or another since ancient times and before. No ethnic, religious, ideological, or social entity can claim immunity from the desire for glory, aka Power.
There is no vaccine or other therapy that can relieve the burning itch once it fastens on the vitals.
Even Jesus Christ was troubled by the weight of glory. Not that He sought glory for Himself. He didn’t. But His disciples certainly did and one of them, Judas who refused the only remedy, was ultimately crushed by its irresistible weight.
On one occasion when they were in private conversation, Jesus asked the twelve what they had been disputing along the way. Obviously, He knew the answer, but the disciples needed a confession for their own moral and spiritual growth.
But, for well-earned shame, the disciples remained silent at this time and refused to acknowledge that along the way they had been arguing about who would bear the greatest weight of glory.
As for Jesus, He was not about to seek His own glory and His entire life taught the importance, the vitality of humility in all of life’s experiences.
Humility, the sole antidote for the destructive desire for personal glory.
But we humans don’t come by humility naturally.
Naturally we want to be first and best in everything even at the expense of all else that matters most for happiness and peace in this troubled world.
And so, we have what we have: wars in Ukraine, East Africa, Yemen, Central Africa, West Africa, potential for more war with really loud noises in the South China Sea, and the recent history of wars almost worldwide, almost continually until we are all but hardened to the blood, the gore, the pain, the separation, the death.
Show me one war in the last 100 years that was not ignited by an inordinate desire for personal glory. Oh, the weight of glory the perpetrators will bear not just in history but in the divine judgment!
We see once-liberal democracies using oppressive measures for population compliance.
We see once-liberal democracies bending the minds of the vulnerable into compliance.
Oh, the glory of it all!
How great grows the weight!
We in Canada have been pretty smug in thinking that the problem lies over there somewhere to the south. It doesn’t.
In seeking the weight of glory, we engage with the best in economic and industrial exploitation of people who cannot help themselves.
We decry the waves of “better-life seekers” forgetting or choosing not to know that it is frequently our own home-grown industries using our personal investments of surplus funds that are driving them off their lands and from their cities.
Can you feel the weight?
We continue to elect corrupt governments that use our own money to buy our allegiance and enhance their weight of glory.
Don’t our so-called leaders understand that bought allegiance is only as good as the money they spend to get it?
Don’t we, the bought, realize that we are being pimped.
When the money’s all gone, what then?
Whom will you phone?
When inflation has eaten up our remaining reserves, what then?
I’ve been observing governments around the world more in these last three years than ever before. What I see bodes no good for us peons who support them with our cheers and our dwindling wealth.
We have been put on notice that everyone will appear before the judgment seat of God. That is one tribunal from which there is no appeal.
That warning applies to Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Putin, Mr. Biden, all contenders for the throne, to me, and the school janitor.
All, without exception, will appear.
There is a weight to glory that may not be apparent when one sets out on a quest for glory. But the weight is there, nevertheless, and will ultimately crush the one who seeks for personal glory – maybe not this year or next, but ultimately the weight of glory will be too great to bear.
Be wise; give God all the glory now and appear without the weight at the judgment.
By the way, here are the ancient words straight from the messenger to the city of Corinth: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ where everyone will receive the penalty or the reward for things done in the body, whether they were good or bad (2:5:10).
Merlin Nichols lives and writes in Chetwynd.
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