Glorified Passion

I have decided that we live our lives through our passions and that everyone is passionate about something. It may not be a good or righteous thing, but we’re still passionate about it. It may even be harmful, something like pornography or even something as loathing as couscous, but passionate we are – about something. Maybe it’s a football team or a particular actor. For followers of Jesus, it should be about anyone else but our self, but even this is not always the case.

Notice I did not say glorious passion in the title. Let me set a definition for this entry; glorious passion would be that which follows the love and passion of God and His son Jesus. Glorified passion would be what we put glory into or onto. There was this time my brother and I were visiting my grandmother in North Carolina and we wanted to go see this guy that restores muscle cars. Sweet. Anyway, while driving out there we saw this jeep being sold in someone’s front yard.

We pulled over at my behest because jeeps were cool and this one looked pretty good. You could see the new paint and to a young “I want a jeep!” kid that meant that it must be really nice. I mean who would put paint on a piece of junk car, right?

I hopped out of my brother’s jeep (he’s older, and yes, I wanted one too) and walked over to it. I saw a little bubble in the paint, right in the middle of the drivers’ door so I reached down to touch the bubble, to see what was causing it.

Whoops. My finger went clean through the door. Like pushing on … I don’t know, a wet paper towel. Someone painted over rust. Not surface rust, just rust. I am now looking down at the door of this jeep with my finger sticking through it and I remove my finger and there is hole that looks like someone shot it with a gun. Clean hole. No edges, just a 12-gauge sized hole. We took off. I know I should have talked to the owner, but well, I didn’t.

Rust with paint over it does not change what is underneath. Just cause it looks like one thing does not make it that. You can glorify whatever you want, but it does not make it glorious. Even if you believe that your actions are justified by your faith, it does not make it glorious.

Glorious passion is what is focused with God’s passion towards what God is passionate about. His passion is anti-self. It puts attention on others and on ourselves and it feeds off of the love the Creator has for us, not our own interests or our own likes or dislikes.

I’ll think more on this for a while, but know this; there is nothing man-driven that deserves more attention than what we give our creator. No movement, no exercise is more important that to love God and serve others.