Читать книгу Glimpses of Glory - David Adam - Страница 6

I love misty days when the sun suddenly breaks through; sometimes I have purposely driven high into the hills to rise out of the fog, knowing that it is low-lying fog and it can be overcome. At the moment you nearly come out of the fog it takes on a strange brightness, a luminosity that promises something different. Then suddenly you are in a land of brightness and everything seems to be bathed in a new glory: sometimes it is as if the world is being totally renewed in colour and splendour, and we see creation taking place.

On Holy Island the main windows of our house face the west and the sunsets. On some cloudy days the sun manages at sunset to drop beneath the clouds and flood the land with light, every pool and bend in the river picks up that light in a reflected glory. It is then good to stop whatever you are doing for a few moments and let that glory enter you also. Occasionally I have to climb a small hill to see the reflected light better; I have to turn aside from what I am doing and take note of what is going on around me; I have to make an effort to behold the glory. Glory does suddenly break into our lives, yet we have to make the effort to see and experience it. R. S. Thomas speaks of this experience of glory in his poem ‘The Bright Field’:

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

of great price, the one field that had

the treasure in it. I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it. Life is not hurrying ...

on to a receding future, nor hankering after

an imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush: to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

(R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems 1945–1990, Phoenix Giant, p. 302)

Life is not hurrying, and yet we seem to speed from one thing to another and never stay long in one place. We have little time to soak up the atmosphere and are in danger of letting the glory pass by, or we bypass it ourselves. If we are to get glory into our lives we have to learn to travel and to see a new way, and that includes looking at ourselves in wonder and awe: we need to know the Divine is within us in all his glory. In his Confessions, Augustine complains:

Men go abroad to wonder at the height of the mountains,

at the huge waves of the sea,

at the long courses of the rivers,

at the vast compass of the ocean,

at the circular motion of the stars:

and they pass by themselves without wondering.

(Confessions, Book X, 8.15)

Too often we are found collecting more information, or video recordings, when we could be allowing the glory to break into our lives. We are offered glimpse after glimpse of glory and yet we fail to see: it is as if our hearts are hardened and our eyes are blind. We do not create glory, it is all about us, we need to open ourselves to it. God’s world is full of his glory, he is ever present and within it. The world and all who live upon it are in the heart of God and God is within the heart of every piece of his creation. If you have not experienced this it is because you have not looked deep enough or long enough.

Intercession is a good way to bring to God all that is in your heart, knowing it is already in his heart, so your heart and his heart are one, you abide in him and he abides in you. Often intercession is an opening of our heart to God and so getting a glimpse of glory. I believe that deep intercession begins in the heart. Go out from your prayer knowing that God is in your heart and in the hearts of all that you meet: return to your prayers with all that you have met and experienced in your heart to be joined to the heart of God. It is amazing how many situations are suddenly washed with a new brightness when we know that God is there and that God cares. Intercession is a method of stopping and getting glimpses of the hidden glory of God.

This book is to help you rise above the gloom and enter into glory. It is not a running away from reality but seeing that there is a greater depth to reality than we normally notice or feel. It is written for you to use at home or at church and so enrich your own prayers. I would hope that each week you follow the suggestions from the Bible readings and extend your own prayers. The readings at the head of each Sunday are from the Common Worship Lectionary as used by the Church of England, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Church in Wales, and other churches within the Anglican Communion. This is very close to the Common Lectionary of the Roman Catholic Church, and is used by other denominations. The Lectionary is designed as a three-year cycle and this book is for use with the third year, designated as Year C; Clouds and Glory is for Year A and Traces of Glory for Year B. In each book, for each Sunday, I have written a collect, that is, a prayer to collect and centre our thoughts, a list of intercessions, an offering of the peace and a blessing. As each week stands it could be used for a short service in a house group or in your home. The intercessions follow the pattern of many books of prayer: we pray, in order, for the church, the world, our homes and loved ones, the sick and the needy, and remember the saints and the departed. If you add the readings from the Lectionary to the prayers, spending some time in quiet and meditation, it will transform your worship at home and in church, and will transform you also. Use this book as a means of opening up to the presence. May God give you a glimpse of glory.