It was almost indistinguishable from a weed yesterday, but it wouldn’t be confused for one today. Weeks have passed since Spring first pulled back the blanket of snow and began to bid the ground to awake. Week by week our family has watched the garden beds as dormant roses, daisies, asparagus, and raspberries send new growth up out of dark soil. Beside the concrete path to our front door, just at the top of the steps that drop down to our driveway, small green stems arched up and filled out with small rings of leaves encircling every few inches. If we didn’t know what this plant was, it would be easy to mistake it for an invading grassy weed. But it wasn’t, and it isn’t. Without fanfare, this small plant went about the daily chores of soaking in sunshine and pulling in water and nutrients from dirt. An unglamorous and tedious cycle of repetitive nourishment. The energy spent by the plant was rewarded with growth and health.

This morning, that energy was rewarded with glory.

As though in response to some unheard command, our beautiful yellow lilies threw open their buds, so tightly encased only a day ago, and provoked the whole garden to jealousy with a riot of sun-like splendor. They now wave gently in the breezes enjoying the big reveal.

The suspense and dramatic revelations of Spring are fitting illustrations for the process of becoming glorious. The athlete agonizing in the gym is preparing for his glory on the field of sport. The caterpillar munching his days away is preparing for the glory of his metamorphosis. The farmer scraping furrows into his empty fields is preparing for the glory of his harvest.

We, the Church of Jesus Christ, in our daily acts of spiritual discipline, in our patient endurance of suffering, in our repetitive labors of service, in our gathering, praying, singing, studying, mourning, and celebrating – day after day, week after week, generation after generation – we are preparing for the big reveal.

There is a glory being worked into us even now, but we do not yet see the final result. We are the children of God now, as John wrote, but “it has not appeared yet what we will be. (1 Jn 3:2)” That day is coming. Just as the sun comes out after the winter, and the flowers bloom beneath its enlivening rays, so when “Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. (Col 3:4)”

To those in our church family who find this season of life to be bitter and sorrowful, take heart in the knowledge that the burdens of your trials are becoming even heavier than you can imagine. But not with a weight to crush you. In a way that I confess I do not understand, but with all the sober truthfulness of the word of God, we have the inescapable promise that the afflictions of this life are “producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. (2 Cor 4:17)."

At the end of winter, all I could see was dirt. Now, everywhere I look is glory. So too, for you and for me in Christ. Let us not begrudge the 1,000 small, sometimes painful, steps it takes to get there.