A Spring of Joy

“You’re glorifying something when you find it beautiful for what it is in itself. It’s beauty compels you to adore it, to have your imagination captured by it…And when it’s a person you find beautiful in that way, you want to serve them unconditionally. When you say, “I’ll serve, as long as I’m getting benefits from it,” that’s not actually serving people; it’s serving yourself through them. That’s not circling them, orbiting around them; it’s using them, getting them to orbit around you…

To glorify others means to unconditionally serve them, not because we’re getting anything out of it, just because of our love and appreciation for who they truly are.

The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are each centering on the others, adoring and serving them. And because the Father, Son and Spirit are giving glorifying love to one another, God is infinitely, profoundly happy…

Self-centeredness makes everything else a means to an end. And that end, that nonnegotiable, is whatever I want and whatever I like, my interests over theirs… If everyone is saying, “No, you orbit around me!” what happens? Picture five people, ten people, a hundred people on a stage together, and every one of them wants to be the center. They all just stand there and say to the others, “You move around me.” And nobody gets anywhere; the dance becomes hazardous, if not impossible.

The Trinity is utterly different. Instead of self-centeredness, the Father, the Son and the Spirit are characterized in their very essence by mutually self-giving love. No person in the Trinity insists that the others revolve around him; rather each of them voluntarily circles and orbits around the others.”

(from Tim Keller’s King’s Cross)

Lord Jesus, make me a woman of unconditional love for You, compelled to adore You for Who You are and may this only deepen my love for and service to others in such a way that You alone receive glory from my life.