The Incredible "Weight of Glory"

Lewis’s “The Weight of Glory” is an incredible insight into that phenomenon which the bible speaks of so much, yet is so difficult for many of us to grasp: our eternal glory. Lewis himself grappled with an accurate definition of this, saying “Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity”, discarding the latter with the rather comical query, “who wishes to become a kind of living electric light bulb?”

But he comes to an interesting insight, that the aforementioned fame is not that amongst our fellows, but rather with God, so it is a kind of “approval or (I might say) “appreciation’ by God” which he supports scripturally with the text “well done thou good and faithful servant” explaining that this kind of recognition is the greatest thing that can be bestowed on one, the recognition by God the pleasure of the “inferior” specifically of a “creature before its Creator”.

There were a lot of things that weighed very heavily on my heart when i read this, but out of all of these things was not what Lewis said about our own glory, but that of our neighbor. This whole page was incredible, but on great thing Lewis says is that “The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.” I think we must realize that there are no “ordinary people” that each and every person has an eternal consequence and because of this we must overlook no one, remembering that each and everyone has the potential to be saved. CS says “But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting
splendours.” Each person is either to attain that glory we hunger and thirst for or cast away. No one is to be taken lightly.

I am very glad I got to share this message with others too, I think this is something we must consider every day, in our interactions with people. They are after all, the next “holiest object presented to your senses.”
This is a little excerpt from a conversation I had with someone about the reading just yesterday (of course, I changed the person’s name.)
[10:48:32 PM] Debbie Yeboah: I will...but Jack, the readings from yesterday were seriously incredible
[10:49:03 PM] Debbie Yeboah: i was reading a paper her wrote abt our eternal glory with God
[10:49:16 PM] Jack: hmmmm..that's great.
[10:49:18 PM] Jack: lol
[10:49:24 PM] Debbie Yeboah: seriously!!!
[10:49:34 PM] Jack: ok…lol
[10:50:07 PM] Jack: dont mind me..wat did it say?
[10:50:07 PM] Debbie Yeboah: it is so powerful, and it actually does change the way you look at people and how u shud relate to them
[10:50:48 PM] Debbie Yeboah: it says that every person we met and talk to and joke with everyday essentially has an eternal consequence
[10:51:02 PM] Debbie Yeboah: each person is an immortal being
[10:51:10 PM] Debbie Yeboah: capable of going one of two ways
[10:51:20 M] Jack: yeah...
[10:51:28 PM] Debbie Yeboah: and everything we do, each action we take can help that person to go either way
[10:51:46 PM]Jack: hmmmm..that’s true..
[10:51:53 PM] Jack: very true
[10:52:40 PM] Debbie Yeboah: the last page of the paper was the most tangibly applicable to me
[10:52:56 PM] Debbie Yeboah: i would send it, but its long
[10:53:09 PM] Debbie Yeboah: the way he explains it is so much better
[10:53:24 PM] Jack: so in other words u want me to read it…sure.
“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.”