I love how in Beauty and the Beast Bell’s greatest fear becomes her one true love. How often is this the same for us? I know none of us tend to get lost in a forest and then locked in the dungeon of a dilapidated castle. If you do you may want to consider new hobbies. What I mean is look at your life. How many times has the road ahead of you seamed like a big, scary monster? The chance to sing professionally, the attempt to send your manuscript or art work off to a publisher, sometimes even the struggle to stay put at the job you’re at even when everything in you says there are greater possibilities out there. Any dream, desire, want, need can seem like a looming dragon with fire oozing from it’s scales and the promise of destruction etched into it’s gleaming golden eyes. But look close at those eyes, you will see yourself looking back. You may even see the fear the dragon holds as he looks at you, because he shares your fear. Even though it may seem as if the dragon is your fear in truth he is just your excuse. If you walk toward him you will see him move aside and transform suddenly into a beautiful road leading to your future. Like I said sometimes your future is where you are, doing what you are doing, and sometimes it’s out there behind the horizon, because no matter what your future is it is almost always beyond what you can see. God has this huge, amazing plan for you that may seem like nothing as you live through it; but somehow that plan is doing amazing things for the world wheather you see it or not. You may be the single difference that makes the most important change. Only God knows what you will cause and do while on this earth, you just have to not be afraid of the beast and realize that he is your dream come true.
Tag: Beauty
If only they’d look closer, they’d find out there’s so much more to me.
Don’t you ever wish that people would look closer, that they wouldn’t judge simply from an off hand meeting? People don’t see the real you until they take the time to get to know the real you. Jesus looks closer right away, he never judges even after He sees the true man/woman behind the mask, He loves you no matter what you are like. If only people could be more like Jesus, often times you wont know what the person is like until they feel comfortable to bring down their barriers and stop hiding behind the front they put up. True, some will prefer the false you and like you less once they get to know you, but others will like you even better when they see the true, genuine article. Don’t be afraid to look closer at people before you decide if you like them or not, Jesus wasn’t, He has always seen us with all our flaws and loves us even more for them, because the flawless can’t be refined.
Made new
The ocean uses everything in it for the benefit of the ones living in it. One of my favorite childhood pastimes was searching for seaglass. Sea glass is beautiful and highly coveted by beach combers, but do you realize what sea glass is? It’s trash, bits of discarded glass and pottery that some lazy person has dropped on the beach or in the Ocean instead of taking it to the garbage. After being discarded this trash is thrown and tossed and caressed and formed by the sea. Let me repeat that. This garbage is formed into something beautiful and sought after.
We are like sea glass. In truth most people start off pretty worthless, and then God takes them. There is tossing and rough beatings getting us to our potential but in the center of that is a gentle guiding hand and in the end we are beautiful and refined.
As the sea makes broken bottles into shimmering crystals, God makes broken people into strong warriors.
Beauty
Everyone probably knows the song you are so beautiful; but imagine that as the love song that God sings to you. I don’t know about you but I want God to think I’m beautiful, on the inside. I want God to smile down and sing ‘you are so beautiful to me,’ with an angel choir as back up obviously.
To be seen as beautiful by your father is a wonderful thing. Don’t you think?
To God we are beautiful when we screw up, when we fail, when we try, when we are hurt, broken or sad. The times when we may seem ugly to the people around us we are still beautiful to God. He loves our inglorious messes, He knows how hard we have struggled and to Him the struggle is beautiful because we have not given up. To God a simple act of kindness is more beautiful than fireworks. Opening the door for a person who has too many things to carry, donating a jacket to a homeless shelter, working the mission field. God sees all works for Him as beautiful. He finds it beautiful when you pray for your neighbors and offer a word of encouragement on a friend’s facebook page. It’s not hard to be beautiful to God; we were born beautiful to Him. We just have to keep being Jesus to the world and maybe then the world too will see our beauty.
Carried in the cross 