A JOY-Filled Morning Meditation -- GLORY!

… the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said.
“I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people…
Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—
the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in highest heaven,
    and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”
Luke 2:10-14 NLT

Year after year, I have meditated in Tim Chester’s magnificent Advent devotional, The One True Light: Daily Readings for Advent from the Gospel of John. And every year, it is fresh and “as if for the first time.”

This year one thought has just “jumped off” the page … and has given me great JOY. Commenting on John 1:14 (“We have seen his glory…”), Chester says,

“In verse 14, John mentions a word we often say in Christian circles, but about which we rarely stop to think what we mean: glory. Literally, glory means ‘weight’ — the heaviness of something, the nature of it. God’s glory is God’s God-ness.”

God’s glory is God’s God-ness!

My mind started down an amazing path, through a few of my favorite passages of Scripture, substituting the word “God-ness” for glory:

Christ in you, the hope of God-ness.
Colossians 1: 27 NASB

So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the God-ness of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him [His God-ness] as we are changed into his glorious [God-ness like] image.
2 Cor 3:18 NLT

For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the God-ness of God in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure [God-ness] in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;
we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not despairing;
 persecuted, but not abandoned;
struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying around in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.  
For we who live are constantly being handed over to death because of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal flesh. …

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer person is decaying, yet our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of God-ness far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Cor 4:6-11, 16-18 NASB

Pause & reflect deeply, dear brothers and sisters. We contain the God-ness of God in Christ dwelling within. GLORY!