Hard Looks

Don’t wear yourself out to get rich; stop giving attention to it. As soon as your eyes fly to it, it disappears – Proverbs 22:4-5

Today we see how to tell the difference between the temporal and the timeless, between the living and the dead, between the wheat and the chaff.

That which is eternal is glorious. Glory connotes weight, a certain substantiality of existence and a heaviness that bears down upon our perception. Perhaps density would be a good way to think of it. When we attend to that which is eternal, it stays put and becomes clearer, ever deeper, and more authentic. When we attend to the temporal – whether wealth or fame or worldly acclaim, when we live for satisfaction, we find that it flits away, seeming always just a little out of reach. If we make the “necessities” of this life our focus, we will never have enough of those necessities, either because we will fall into poverty or because we will never know when we have enough. It’s similar to two forms of malnutrition – the starving Ethiopian version and the Michael Moore version.

We can see it in religion, business, government, sports, art, even in relationships. Trying to grasp the good is like trying to embrace a vapor. In order to draw good out of the world, we look long at and love the Good.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)

We all, with unveiled faces, are looking at as in a mirror the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18)

…We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is (1 John 3:2)