favorites from Eldredge

I receive daily readings from John Eldredge. This is one of my favorites...an excerpt from Waking the Dead. (burningalive, this might be one part of the answer to your question of me, learning to be identified from our glory -- rather than our wounds and sin....it's what i think i started to hear you say in your most recent post)

Looking for a Glory We Know We Were Meant to Have
12/10/2006

The poet Yeats wrote,
If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be rightFrom mirror after mirror
No vanity’s displayed:
I’m looking for the face I hadBefore the world was made.
(“Before the World Was Made” from the poem “A Woman Young and Old”)

Yes, that’s it. When we take a second glance in the mirror, when you pause to look again at a photograph, we are looking for a glory you know you were meant to have, if only because you know you long to have it. You remember faintly that you were once more than what you have become. Your story didn’t start with sin, and thank God, it does not end with sin. It ends with glory restored: “Those he justified, he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30).

And “in the meantime,” you have been transformed, and you are being transformed. You’ve been given a new heart. Now God is restoring your glory. He is bringing you fully alive. Because the glory of God is you fully alive.

“Well, then, if this is all true, why don’t I see it?” Precisely. Exactly. Now we are reaching my point. The fact that you do not see your good heart and your glory is only proof of how effective the assault has been. We don’t see ourselves clearly.

(Waking the Dead , 78–79)