They say never meet your heroes. I guess being up close and personal with glory reveals how inglorious it really is.
Why do we want to keep glory so far out of reach? What is it that justifies why they can touch heaven but we can only aspire for the treetops?
The beautiful actress in your favourite show has crippling anxiety and depression. The athlete in your posters who endorsed the shoes you’re wearing is a serial cheater and his marriage is in ruins. And your mom has a criminal record buried in alcoholism and shame before she had you.
I’ve met some influencers recently; those saved few who escaped ordinary and entered heaven. They’re all types of angels, you know. The kind that smiles and sashay like the camera never cuts. Then there are those who remain aloof in the corner; they don’t shine like the sun, more of a glow like the moon. There are even angels who seem a little crazy (you know, the ones with a billion eyes) but there’s just something about it that you can’t look away from. Many are the faces in heaven. But give me 5 minutes of banter and they’re earthy to me.
The separation between ourselves and our own greatness is the distance we see between us and the ambiguous them.
“They got there because of links” “They wouldn’t be anything without their looks” “They were just lucky”
Luck is my favourite one. It puts the other reasons to shame. You can’t capture luck, can’t kill it, can’t burn its pretty little face off. You either have it or you don’t. What an ego-saver!
Hey, maybe it does exist. Who’s to say? I’m no man-in-the-sky. I’m just a girl. On earth. My hero is my mom. Up close and personal, she’s not perfect. She has her days and her ways.
But she sparkles in a way that lets me know that, with all my ways and days, I sparkle too. And in my little corner of the universe when I am observed, you may just see sparkle.
We’re all just shiny dust. Shine on tiny specks.
For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.