“Glory is to God what style is to an artist.” With these words, Frederick Buechner cracks open a fascinating definition of ‘glory’ in Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC
A painting by Vermeer, a sonnet by Donne, a Mozart aria — each is so rich with the style of the one who made it that to the connoisseur it couldn’t have been made by anybody else, and the effect is staggering. The style of artists brings you as close to the sound of their voices and the light in their eyes as it is possible to get this side of actually shaking hands with them.
In the words of the nineteenth Psalm, “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” It is the same thing. To the connoisseur, not just sunsets and starry nights but dust storms, rain forests, garter snakes, the human face, are all unmistakably the work of a single hand. Glory is the outward manifestation of that hand in its handiwork just as holiness is the inward. To behold God’s glory, to sense his style, is the closest you can get to him this side of Paradise, just as King Lear is the closest you can get to Shakespeare.
Glory is what God looks like when for the time being all you have to look at him with is a pair of eyes.
I want to be a “connoisseur” – what about you?!
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