Glory to Glory

I don’t understand this “glory to glory”

My last season felt full of glory–

Adventure, breakthrough, freedom, revelation.

Now I sit alone by the sea, alone with my thoughts.

I contemplate the end of the season, and wonder,

How is this good? How is this glory to glory?

If something is good, shouldn’t it last forever?

But here I sit, the ties of the season to sever.

I know I leave behind a season of glory

In a broken country where light shines bright.

Now, on to re-enter the artificial light of the West.

Are You sure, God, this is what’s best?

How can I leave behind a place that needs You so?

How can I see the darkness and not go?

How can I leave and still love,

Unless from a word from above.

From glory to glory, or glory to complacency?

As I sit on this rock, I cry out again

I need direction and wisdom

Should I stay or should I go?

I’m learning what it looks like to love the lost–

Only, the lost doesn’t look like I thought it would.

I’m learning it can look many ways

As I peer through my emotional haze.

The lost is not confined to a location

The lost is rather a condition of heart,

And deep down our hearts are the same,

Plagued by sin, the reason Christ came.

Whether in a hut in the Himalayas,

Or a mansion in the Hamptons,

How often our stories are the same,

Full of doubt and struggle and shame.

I hear stories of addiction, betrayal, abuse.

I see tears in their eyes that mirror my own

As I realize our hearts are the same,

And missions isn’t a game.

Another testimony, another similarity

Differences arise in traditions and details,

But the main struggle at heart is the same.

As I listened, my family these people became.

Walking down dirt paths in the Himalayas,

Or through concrete streets in the West,

I smell the same numbing drug

And how often have I passed with only a shrug?

I see the same empty look in their eyes,

Searching for passion and purpose in all the wrong places.

How often we use the same numbing techniques,

Yet through the veneer our brokenness leaks.

As I sit and ponder my time on the field,

I begin to understand what the harvest may yield.

The field is larger than I thought,

Not confined to one part of the globe.

If our hearts are the same, the where matters less

I’m realizing that glory to glory has more to do

With the WHO

Than the where, the what, the when.

Glory to glory isn’t about what we do,

But about who we are looking at,

And who He is making us to be.

Through this, I realize that I am free.

I am free to leave this season of glory behind,

Because I know a greater glory lies ahead–

The glory as of the only begotten Son of God,

Who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow,

Who is able to heal every nation’s sorrow.