Pray like Moses, boldly and a little fiercely, “Lord, show us your glory.” And then look up. Look at the person beside you. Look across the tables in Parke Hall on a Wednesday night. The glory you’re seeking may already be sitting right there.

It turns out that idolatry is at its heart a problem of patience. That is the insight I learned from another French philosopher, this time a contemporary who lived nearly four centuries after Pascal. In his lectures on hospitality, Jacques Derrida, no doubt puffing on his famous pipe, spoke to a group of students gathered in a Parisian lecture hall. He said this: “Not knowing how to wait is idolatry, it is to produce from oneself what one wants to allow to come.”