A Glimpse of Glory

Christmas approaches. In the United States we have a little controversy going on about how it should be celebrated and by whom. I'm receiving emails urging me to urge my friends to pray for our country, because it is in grave danger of becoming thoroughly and completely secular. Well, for the moment I choose not to worry about such things and prefer rather to focus upon what happened on that night that Jesus was born—whenever that was. And with that focus I shall meditate upon what that means to you and me.

Here are the words from St. Luke 2:9—


"An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified."


I'm quite amazed by what it means that this angel, this messenger from the Lord God, appeared to the shepherds. Where did he come from? And how did he get there? After he (she, it—they have no sexuality) delivered his message, he and the others disappeared. Luke writes that they left them and went into heaven (Luke 2:15).


Don't ask me what that fully means, please. I can make some guesses as C.S. Lewis does in his writings and as do many others. Lewis speaks in the same way as modern sci-fi writers do about multi-dimensions and other universes. He calls them countries and implies that when we "get to heaven" we will discover the real Houston or the real Chicago or the real United States or the heavenly Jerusalem or wherever you are from. What we experience now is but a shadow of what is to come (check out Hebrews 8:1-5 and Hebrews 12:22-29). The angels live in that reality. We are yet in the valley of the shadow (Psalm 23).


The Apostle Paul points to our sharing in that same reality when he writes,


"But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3:20-21).


In that glorious day when our Savior returns we will share in that final, definitive, complete and most real glory known now by the angels. The shepherds had a glimpse of it—for a moment.