Today’s find: Weight of glory

Tough it was, nearly a physical burden, to answer the bell on Saturday morning.

In the moment, it seemed like I was doing my level best to channel the spirit of St. Paul – “So death is at work in us” (2 Cor 4: 12). And I had no one to blame but myself, having played a round of golf on Thursday afternoon, a pickle ball match on Friday morning, and another round of golf on Friday.

Truly a “first-world problem,” I know. But that realization didn’t make it any easier to drag my kiester out of bed the following day. Let’s just say my body doesn’t tend to bounce back from physical activity the way it used to. The pillow and sheets were calling my name, a siren song that every fiber of my increasingly-decrepit being deeply desired to embrace.

Seemed like a good idea at the time: playing a 2nd round of golf in two days…

Somehow I managed to shake off the creaks and aches and brain fog, though … and found myself stumbling into something of a mystical realm. Just “showing up” (as is my habit) at our weekly men’s faith-sharing group, I encountered words from St. Paul that seemed to speak attractive promises directly to my self-inflicted physical condition.

“For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,” the saint says in 2 Corinthians. “For what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven.”

I could feel the weight, all right. The glory was a bit tougher to discern early in the morning. But then I traveled south with some of my Kairos brothers, to keep our appointment for a monthly reunion at Menard. The men we met with at the prison also have a burden to carry, a burden (in most cases) of their own making. A burden (in every respect) far more imposing than my own temporal throbs and weariness.  

But here’s the thing: When we come together in Christ, we volunteers from the outside and the incarcerated men we serve, then the unseen … the eternal … somehow becomes visible to us for a time. Like St. Paul, we discover that “our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

Grace is often present in our afflictions…

My favorite moment came late in our session yesterday. One of our inside brothers (I’ll call him Devin) was witnessing about a particular struggle in his life – the new cellmate he’d been assigned a month or two ago, a pill of a person who seems incapable of showing any kindness or respect.

“I keep praying for patience,” Devin said. “Again and again, I’ve asked God to give me that grace, to make me more patient. And just now, I’m realizing that God has already answered my prayer. He’s given me this cellie … to teach me how to be patient.”

As Devin speaks his wisdom, I am moved to marvel at how God’s grace sometimes works in just this way: How a weight can be turned into glory.

This insight wouldn’t come as news to St. Paul, I suppose, for as he observes: “Everything is indeed for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on [us] may cause thanksgiving to flow for the glory of God.”

As grace is bestowed, thanksgiving ever flows.

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS