God's Glory Will Appear

As I pray the Psalms, I find myself appropriating the prayer of the psalmist as my own, fitting it to the circumstances I see around me. Many, many of those prayers are for our church. Here’s what caught my heart today from Psalm 102, verse 16:

“For you will build up Zion,
         and your glory will appear.”

I boldly appropriate this prayer, this statement of confidence, for Resurrection Lutheran Church. May the Lord build up our church so that God’s glory will appear. But, I have to ask myself; do I ask this for God’s glory? Really? Or do I ask it for the glory of you who have, for years, put so much of yourselves into the life of this church and for you who have recently been led to this church and are lovingly giving yourselves to God’s work here? Do I hope for God’s glory, really? Or do I hope for the Confirmands that I want to see complete the three years and be confirmed? Their glory and mine.

God of Glory, please keep my eyes, heart, mind on your glory – not ours.

“For you will build up Zion,
         and your glory will appear.”

I appropriate this prayer for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Of course I believe that we, of the ELCA, tell the story as faithfully as it can be told, and the world needs our voice, our hands. I’m sure we don’t have everything ‘right’, but I do believe we’re on the right track as we speak love and grace more loudly than judgment and condemnation; welcome rather than walls of separation.

So, if God is doing the building up, then God will build up that within us that does reveal God’s glory and let the rest of what’s in us fall away – or be blown away like the chaff, the garbage that’s attached to each grain of wheat.

“For you will build up Zion,
        and your glory will appear.”

Finally, I claim this hopeful prayer for the geographical Zion: Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine.

O God, your glory seems to be trampled there.

All eyes look there to see God revealed, and what they see is the dust of the chaff blinding their eyes. Hatred, violence, intolerance, exclusion, oppression, fear, enmity, power struggles. Everyone seems to declare God’s name but many live in opposition to God’s desire for justice and peace. What will it take for God’s glory to shine through the debris?

“For you will build up Zion,
        and your glory will appear.”

God of Glory, please accept our humble, sometimes misguided, efforts and offerings; make of them that which will reveal your glorious name, your love, mercy, and hope for all the world. Burn away the chaff so that our motives will be true. For you will build up Zion, and your glory will appear. Amen. Yes, Lord, please let it be so – and soon. Amen. Amen.