We travelled recently to the African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe. To go on holiday somewhere that most people have never heard of, let alone found on a map is a fantastic privilege and humbling as well. More of that in weeks to come, sorry.
Today’s reading is Isaiah 60:1-7, a passage about the blessing to be enjoyed by Israel as she is visited by God’s Glory and consequently will welcome visitors from far and wide seeking to honour God and bring tribute. In the past, if you had asked me where I most felt a sense of the glory of God, I would have pointed you to towering mountains and deep ravines.
Nothing I learned at school or have read since prepared me for the breathtaking sight of the equatorial rainforest. It is not that it affords beautiful vistas or grand landscapes so much as that its heart is packed with life. Everywhere is something different, sounds that often cannot be connected to a sight because of inexperienced eyes. There was danger from snakes and the company of monkeys, and we saw neither. Our safety was dependent on a young man wielding a machete who knew exactly what he was about.
Our holiday taught me much about the blight of slavery, the happiness of greater simplicity and the rhythm of the days and nights being always of the same length. Our holiday reminded me of the ridiculousness of the emphasis we put on some of our first world problems and the dramas of our lives that really are not dramatic at all.
Above all that, our holiday taught me that God’s Glory is a tangle of life of many shapes and sizes, some seen and much unseen, interwoven and interdependent; not idyllic but raw, sometimes cruel but all perfectly synchronised to be what it was created to be. The Glory of the Lord rose, for me, in the humid heat and unseen danger of an almost impenetrable terrain.
A Prayer
Creator God, remind us that what we know is not necessarily all there is, and what we see is not everything. Give us grace to be responsive to new revelations of you and to change old opinions in response to the sights and sounds round us. We pray for people everywhere in all the complexities of life and ask for everyone, something that gives to each a glimpse of your glory, whether that be in the sky above, the world around or the earth beneath. Amen.