There’s an old hymn that is not in our books or the Paperless Hymnal: “O Christ, He is the Fountain.” If you don’t recognize it, you have a second chance to recognize part of it. It’s quoted in the hymn “The Sands of Time Are Sinking.”
Here’s the line that I want to share with you:
“The bride eyes not her garment, but her dear bridegroom’s face. I will not gaze at glory, but on my king of grace. Not at the crown he giveth, but on his pierced hand. The Lamb is all the glory, and my eternal stand!”
When the bride steps into the church, with everyone standing, all eyes on her, and the groom waiting at the altar, she’s not looking at her dress. It doesn’t matter how expensive the dress is or how perfect she looks. She doesn’t see the candles or the flowers or the pews or the rose petals. She sees her groom. He’s what matters. (It’s true for the groom, too. I’ll never forget how everything melted away when those doors opened and I saw Leslie walk in!)
Sometimes we talk about what we think we’ll do when we get to heaven. We talk about wanting to meet Peter or ask God some questions about how he ran the place. There may be a time and a place for it, but I suspect that we’ll be a lot more like the bride in the hymn. Everything but the groom will melt away. Nothing else matters. “The lamb is all the glory, and my eternal stand.” One more application: at church, we spend far too much time looking at the wrong things. We evaluate the quality of the sermon and decide whether or not we like the songs or the person in the pew next to us. Church is actually supposed to call us to something far bet