magnify His glory

Jolie Britt is one of our college kids (freshman, excuse me SOPHOMORE at OSU). I would encourage you to read her latest blog. An excerpt:

This whole week I have been thinking about God's glory, and what it means to fully respond to it. To use an illustration of one of my favorite teachers, John Piper, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. He describes God's glory as so great and so wonderful, that our human, finite, time-driven minds cannot fully comprehend it. All of human life is spent reaching for His glory, striving for His passion.

Our response should be one of trying to reveal the little bit of glory that we can comprehend now, to the rest of the world. In short, we are to magnify his glory to the world. Now there are two ways to magnify something. You can use a microscope or a telescope. A microscope is used to make something that is really small bigger.

As a church, we cannot try to magnify God in this way. If we do, essentially we are saying, "Oh God, you need our help. You are far too small. These people can't see your work everywhere on this planet, in their DNA, in their daily living. Let me help you, for God you are too small." In saying this, we make ourselves above God, an reduce Christianity to a spritualized version of secular humanism. However, there is another approach.

One can also use a telescope to magnify something. When one uses a telescope to look at the stars, one does not see an amplified version of a small thing. One sees more clearly what the stars truly are. HUGE THINGS that we cannot see unless the images are reflected and refracted into our finite understanding of them. If magnify God to the world as a telescope, we will essentially let others see God's HUGENESS and MAJESTY in a way that is applicable to their lives. And when they look through us to see God's hugeness, we fade away. And only Christ is there. Overwhelmingly loving and purposeful and righteous.

Good stuff Jolie.