A man of God came to me. He looked like the angel of God—terror laced with glory! Judges 13:18 (MSG)
Laced With Glory – The Wonder and Grace Series – Part 1
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
Recorded in the book of Judges, one hundred or so years before the birth of King David, is a story about a couple from Zorah who were unable to have children. An angel appeared to the woman (who is not named) and told her that she would conceive, in fact, she was already pregnant. The son she would bear would ignite a revolution, and would launch their people's deliverance from their oppressors: the Philistines.
Sounds familiar, right? Oppression at the hands of empire, redemption, exodus and deliverance are reoccurring themes in the biblical text… (do you think it’s trying to tell us something?)
Don’t let the familiarity or the age of the story or the people who are represented in it, strip it of its wonder. The Ancients may not have had our advancement and understanding regarding technology and science, but they knew how to wonder, and they lived with an understanding of the unseen and known being mixed and held tightly together.
After the angel had appeared to the woman (I would LOVE to be able to call her by name), she told her husband that he “looked like the angel of God—terror laced with glory!” (Judges 13:6 MSG).
We sing beautiful songs about the name of God, the wonder of his beauty and this majesty of his being, his encompassing holiness, but I wonder if we ever stop to imagine what it would be like to encounter him face to face. Does he even have a face? What does terror laced with glory look like? Feel like? What would it do to your heart and soul to stare the Divine full in the face?
We throw God’s name around, and the idea of him, like its any other common thing. Modern day Christian religion in many of its expressions and traditions has made the gospel personal, but also in some cases, something so familiar that we forget its miraculous nature.
But Monoah’s wife, the woman we talked about above, described the encounter as something she couldn’t explain with mere language. When the angel appeared to her husband, he asked him his name, and he replied,
“What’s this? You ask for my name? You wouldn’t understand — it’s sheer wonder.”
Terror laced with glory.
Did Mary (the mother of Jesus) see the same thing when the angel visited her years and years later? Had the wonder worn off? Was He a little less terrifying, a little less glorious?
What about you and I?
What do we hear when we say the name “Jesus?” What do we feel when we say the name of “God”? What do we think of when we talk about the spiritual and the miraculous with our people. Are we expecting the undefinable and terrifying and glorious? Do we expect that there is more going on than we could possibly ever know in a single lifetime?
Or do we slip into seeing and expecting and experiencing something less than “sheer wonder?” Something definable that fits into a box, that we can explain away with policies and behaviors and preferences and loyalties?
Go to Part 2 – Heart and Soul »
Written by Lizzy Milani
[font_awesome link=”https://www.instagram.com/lizzy.milani/” icon=”instagram” color=”000″ size=”16px” margin_right=”” margin_left=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=””] lizzy.milani [font_awesome link=”https://www.twitter.com/lizzymilani/” icon=”twitter” color=”000″ size=”16px” margin_right=”” margin_left=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=””] lizzymilani
[vcex_image_grid columns=”3″ pagination=”false” thumbnail_link=”custom_link” link_title_tag=”true” custom_links_target=”_blank” overlay_style=”title-category-visible” columns_gap=”5″ img_hover_style=”fade-out” image_ids=”20934,20935,20937″ custom_links=”https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1239768002?pt=118656308&ct=blog%20footer&mt=8,https://www.pktfuel.com/dailyemail,https://www.pktfuel.com/support” img_height=”350″]