No Guts, no Glory

As I've mentioned before, (ad nauseam, probably) I'm still involved in the online course: The Universe Story. All my reading and dialog with other students is beginning to take its effect on every aspect of the way I think and process other information. [When you consider a history that's been unfolding for 13.7 billion years (the current estimate), it's no wonder it's taking me so long to process it.]

You may also remember I'm also involved in an online book club. (See link in the sidebar called "Book Club".) We're reading Moments with the Savior by Ken Gire, and I'll say right now, were it not for the group members, it's a book I would have put back on the shelf long ago. Gire's style is too schmaltzy for my taste, and he takes tremendous liberties with his meditations, putting extra thoughts and words into peoples mouths and hearts that aren't supported by scripture. When did that become an issue for me, you may rightly ask. Aren't I always reading more into those particular written Words myself? Maybe so, but this guy makes me look like a literalist.

Anyway, one of the chapters this week was on the Transfiguration. The sacrificial nature of the Universe is one of the compelling pieces that (for me) links the Universe story to Christ.

In our culture, most people avoid pain, suffering, even sacrifice, at all costs. Yet it seems Christ was the only one who understood that the way God ordered the unfolding of time and space, galaxies and evolving life on planet Earth, required death. Required that one species be sacrificed to nourish and bring forth the next. Millions of years ago the first cells realized they could eat each other to live. Through evolution that way of nourishing ourselves was passed down to today's life forms. Some species eat plants, others eat animals, humans do both. It is an intricate web, each part sustaining and complementing the others, but all are a part of the whole web of life. For humans to believe that we need not play the game as other life forms do, is both blasphemy and idiocy. As we continue to destroy and degrade all life forms (in an attempt to make our own lives more comfortable) we end up destroying ourselves.

The Transfiguration was a glimpse of glory... heaven on earth, the kingdom come. Gire thinks that everything paled in the face of that astounding light. My sense would be that everything glowed even brighter because of it. Here finally was one human being with the face of God, who could see and understand the ways of God and was trying to teach them to his fellow humans. But as Peter did, we do. Let's memorialize the event and then we won't have to live it ourselves. Christ was trying to tell us... no guts, no glory. Literally.