Glory

Glory: high renown or honour; splendour; magnificence or great beauty; an aureole (halo) or similar optical phenomenon.

Not that long ago we were caring for my mother-in-law during the last couple of weeks of her life, and we watched her die. The process did not seem very glorious to me. Was I missing something?

Leading up the the crucifixion John records that some Greek foreigners asked disciple Philip: "We would see Jesus". Philip and Andrew in turn present this request to Our Lord who answers them somewhat obliquely: saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary (JFB) sums up what follows rather succinctly:

They would see Jesus, would they? Yet a little moment, and they shall see Him so as now they dream not of. The middle wall of partition that keeps them out from the commonwealth of Israel is on the eve of breaking down, "and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, shall draw all men unto Me"; I see them "flying as a cloud, and as doves to their cotes"--a glorious event that will be for the Son of man, by which this is to be brought about. It is His death He thus sublimely and delicately alluded to. Lost in the scenes of triumph which this desire of the Greeks to see Him called up before His view, He gives no direct answer to their petition for an interview, but sees the cross which was to bring them gilded with glory.

A chapter later the theme is repeated after Judas having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night and once again JFB sums up so well: But with what words is the silence first broken on the departure of Judas? By no reflections on the traitor, and, what is still more wonderful, by no reference to the dread character of His own approaching sufferings. He does not even name them, save by announcing, as with a burst of triumph, that the hour of His glory has arrived! And what is very remarkable, in five brief clauses He repeats this word "glorify" five times, as if to His view a coruscation of glories played at that moment about the Cross.  God is glorified in him--the glory of Each reaching its zenith in the Death of the Cross!

The thought is clear: the cross was, or was the instrument of, Christ's glory. Crucifixion does not seem very glorious to me. Of course in retrospect we can see glory beyond the cross. And we can hope for glory beyond the grave for my mother-in-law. But for me here and now I don't see much 'glory' in the process of physical death. Am I  missing something?