“Let glory to them in the highest be given,” (William W. Phelps, “The Spirit Of God”). Deep down all of us want to be living the best possible version of our lives. We don't always know how to go about that. Sometimes we know what we should be doing but we're too filled with doubts and fears and distractions to marshall the necessary focus and effort to get it done. And sometimes we just have no clue what the best move is or how we would execute it and so we just go stumbling on and try to make it all work as best we can. But in those moments when we know exactly what we are supposed to do and we're in that state of flow, perfectly executing our perfect vision, there is no other way to describe such moments than glorious. But this glory that we feel cannot be for us alone. After all, it is not as though we have been able to operate at the highest level all on our own. If we do any good thing, it is only by the grace of God. When we are doing everything that we can to bring out the best in ourselves, God takes all that we can do and He adds to it His own miraculous power, and thus, our efforts together with God’s grace make something glorious. It is far better for us to entrust all of the Glory to God. First of all, it mostly belongs to Him already. But more importantly, we are imperfect and inadequate containers for this glory. Glory wants to rise up to the highest point, and at present, we must keep ourselves firmly rooted in this time and place, as much as we might like to follow glory upward, and, as John Gillespie Magee Jr put it in his poem “High Flight”, “slip the surly bonds of earth, and dance the sky on laughter-silvered wings.” Our glory will be waiting for us, when it is finally time to ascend to the highest. In the meantime, let us continue always to seek for ourselves the very best possible version of our lives, the version that brings the most glory, and let that glory be given to God in the highest.
