Discerning the Spark of God’s Glory
By Andrew Goins
Watauga County
“The Motions of the Dipping Birds –
The Morning’s Amber Road –
For mine – to look at when I liked –
The News would strike me dead –”
~ Emily Dickenson ~
I rode my bike on Hickory Nut Gap Rd to go work at the church. I rounded a bend in the road when I saw it – I mean really saw – in all of its jagged, rough-hewn, naked glory—Grandfather Mountain. Grandfather was foregrounded by a sea of fog that had collected in the meadow. At the meadow’s edge, the morning light punctured the pines at the edge of the valley. It was glorious.
Grandfather Mountain towers above the town where I live. I see it every day, but I fail to perceive it every day. The difference between sight and perception is discernment. Sight requires a good eye doctor. Discernment requires wisdom—a seeing with the eyes of the heart. And what is it that I discerned in that moment? The blazing fire of God’s glory. I decided to hike Grandfather Mountain that weekend.
***
Saturday morning rolled around. It was a cold morning. I pulled up to the lower Profile trail parking lot just before 8:00 am to find the gates closed. I waited ten minutes and then started to turn around when an SUV pulled up. The driver rolled down his window and then offered to open the gate. I said I would be grateful. After he opened the gate, I followed him into the parking lot where I waited for my friend to pick me up. He was ten minutes late. After I jumped into his car, he started sharing stories about his experiences on the trail. One time, he took his Russian friends on the profile trail, and they decided to bushwhack several miles from Calloway Peak down to the Grandfather Golf and Country Club. He proceeded to tell me about the steep rock faces that they would have had to climb down or go around and about the dense shrubbery.
We pulled up to the gate that guards the penniless people from the beauty-rich land. My friend exchanged pleasant conversations with the gatekeeper who worked for his dad way back when. After we passed through the gate, my friend told me about the geological history of the land: the tectonic shifts that sculpted the mountain into being; the weather that—through time, which took no holiday—slowly shaved the rock into its particular shape.
We pulled up to the barren parking lot. I jumped out with youthful vigor primed for the trail. The sky was blue, speckled with intermittent clouds dabbed on the distant horizon. My friend wished me ‘happy trails’ and then marched up the Grandfather trail whistling the tune “Angeline the Baker”. I only got halfway through the tune because the steep ascension stole all of my excess whistling breath. But I kept up my brisk pace.
I passed Alpine Meadow several miles in and then I found a reclusive overlook to smoke my cigar and look at the view. Then I saw it, or rather, perceived it staring at me face to face, the film of familiarity freshly scrubbed—Banner Elk. The town I have lived in for a year. I had hiked Grandfather hoping to discern its glory. But here I was, discerning the fire of God’s glory in Banner Elk. Ironic, isn’t it?
***
There’s a thin film of familiarity that collects in the everyday drill. Routine makes discernment drunk, inebriated by rhymes of yesterday and today. The infrastructure of routine lulls us into never moving beyond the eye doctor, never moving beyond sight to perception. John Calvin writes this: “There is no spot in the universe where you cannot discern at least some spark and his glory.”
Our task? Discerning the spark of glory in the particular corner of the universe you inhabit so that you can see with the eyes of your heart how “the voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning” and how “the voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare.” With such sight what is there to do but shout, “Glory!” with David?
Where does discernment begin? It begins with fear. Two kinds of fear concern us: the fear of the Lord and the fear of everything else. The former is healthy; the latter is parasitical. The former keeps us attentive to God’s work in the world as we keep our eyes on the one who is King over the world. The latter pillages our energy by occupying our thoughts, with both the articulate “what-ifs’ that manipulate our imaginations and the subconscious worry that haunts our lives.
A husband has a healthy fear when he beholds his bride walking down the aisle in all of her glory. This fear is good and holy. It is a fear that captures his eyes—he can’t look away even as he trembles while beholding her. It is a fear that makes everything else peripheral and small. He gives her, not only his attention but also his heart. This is the-fear-of-the-Lord. If you stay in the fear of the Lord, you will discern the spark of God’s glory that will do nothing other than fan the flame of worship.
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Andrew Goins is on staff for a campus ministry at Appalachian State University called Ratio Christi. He also works as a youth leader and worship leader at Arbor Dale Presbyterian Church in Banner Elk.
Andrew is committed to simply and thoroughly loving his wife Bethany, growing in his bible nerdiness, delighting in good books (theology, poetry, and select fiction), music, photography, creation, and in gathering people together for bible studies, a shared meal, or making music.
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