Jared Anderson on Glory

You dance over me
While I am unaware
You sing all around
But I never hear the sound
Lord, I’m amazed by You

- Jared Anderson in Amazed

I'm not a big fan of church music that reduces down to songs about "me and my needs". I think the sooner we can learn to stop thinking so much about ourselves, the better off we'll be. At first listen, this song sounds like it's heading down that same road. But after a couple times through it, I started to hear more...

As the ineffable, inescapable C.S. Lewis says in The Weight Of Glory,

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not!

How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us.

It is written that we shall 'stand before' Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God.

To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son -- it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.

I had just finished reading that this morning when the above song came down through my headphones. I was -- can I say this? -- knocked on my ass by the thought.

One more piece from Lewis...

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

Okay, that's enough quoting. I will just confess here in a small voice that these things are bringing tears to my eyes today. It is a wonderful thing to be wholly received and accepted.

But go read the whole thing for yourself. And track down that song. There's much more to all of this than what I've got room for here.