whoa
its been a while huh?!
well first off if you saw my tweet from last night...know that today has seen great improvement
if you missed the tweet...it said: "i dont matter"...sometimes you just have moments where you need to know youre loved and people care about you, yes of course the Lord cares and i know that but He made us relational for a reason...He made us to need each other...and last night i was pretty lonely...but as usual God has answered pleas and cries today and has exceeded expectation in far different and im sure much better ways than i could have imagined
ok so heres my lightbulb/God winking at me/spiritual KABOOM moment of the day...which consists of 2 mini stories and then a comparison/contrasting entree
k?
cool.
so mini story 1:
i remember years ago my dad using a sermon illustration about when he was little being taken on a driving tour of houses decorated with christmas lights and seeing one that was just apparently magical...it had all the most beautiful lights and wonderful decorations you could imagine, quite breathtaking from his description...it was apparently far more fantastic and memorable then any other house he saw and for days and days afterward it was all he talked about
i guess in the interest of silencing his excitement/consistent goings on about this particular casa one of his family members made him get in the car one day and drove him back to the same house except that it was in the daylight...
to his young minds surprise and quite understandable dismay when he arrived, all he found was a trailer with a ton of tacky sights around it that was about as far from beautiful as you can get...im sure you have experienced this unpleasant and disappointing display at some point or another in your lifetime
mini story 2:
i have started going to seacoast church in mt pleasant and am really enjoying it/stoked for what im learning there
i live in an apartment in north charleston though so getting there involves a 20 minute drive over 2 bridges...driving to any place enough times i feel like eventually gets old and redundant and you start to take what youre seeing on the way to your destination for granted...i hope so much that this isnt the case with the drive to mt p.
why?
oh glad you asked...
because for most of the drive if you look on either side of the bridges (but not for too long, ya know, since youre driving) you feel like you are driving straight into either a lowcountry postcard or a nicholas sparks movie...and lets face it, either ones a win
seriously its the most beautiful green marshland with the perfect amount of picturesque trees, docks, and boats, words dont do it justice...but if you ever see it/have seen it...you know what i mean
since ive been going to this church for about 6 weeks, ive driven by the view in light, dark, fog, sunshine, rain, lightning, wind, morning, night...you know what im sayin?
ive also seen the view from the bottom of the bridge and ive seen it from the top
ive seen it when the waterway is crowded and ive seen it when there isnt a soul to be had other than the turtles and the gators (not that turtles and gators do or do not have souls, lets not get sidetracked guys)
and ya know what?
that view is just plain gorgeous...
it doesnt matter what time of day, or what the traffic is, or how many people are in the water, or what the weather is...
its just beautiful.
always.
entree:
so what kate?!
heres what-
as i was driving home from the service tonight (yep they have a service on sunday nights...not an additional service...the same one they do on sunday mornings....so what up sleepin late on sundays and still hanging out with Jesus?!?!?! heyyyyyy)
anyway-it was basically monsooning the whole drive too and from the service but as i crossed back over the bridge and looked down the view caught my eye and left me breathless and then i started thinking about how amazing it was that something could be beautiful and lovely no matter the temporary circumstances around it...it blew my mind that there could be in existence on this earth something that is beautiful. always. no matter what.
then story number 1 came to me and i started wondering what the difference was...why some things can be beautiful sometimes and other things are lovely all the time
heres the answer i came up with:
the christmas trailer wasnt beautiful.
i can say that having never seen it with full confidence.
it may have been surrounded with lovely things.
it may have possessed some beauty.
but the trailer when certain circumstances, when the light was exposed to it, showed what it truly was...just a trailer, with some tacky crap on it...
the view though...
now the view IS beautiful, it doesnt possess beauty, its made of beauty-the water, the animals, the tall grass, the wild flowers, and strong tall trees standing alone in the marsh...its ingredients are the definition of beautiful
its state of being is beauty. it cant be anything else because it doesnt know how.
and i know that its lovely without a doubt because ive seen it, tested it through time, with lots of temporary circumstances and outside influences about it changing, yet because its made of beautiful things...lovely is what it remains
now im sure that the view looks different now than it did 20 years ago, im sure that definitive circumstances and forces like hurricanes and erosion have changed the exact appearance of it...
and yet still
its breathtaking
you see, that trailer:
its just an ugly thing that somebody thought they could change with a few reindeer and a light up santa
but that wetland:
beauty is what defines that view, no matter what somebody or something does or does not do to it
i think i just realized that daily we wake up with a choice:
we can either be an ugly thing that pretends in certain situations to be lovely by possessing beauty and putting on things or roles or words or actions or likes or dislikes or fill in your blank
if we continue to do that though the light will eventually come, day will strike and our faith and love and nature and very state of being will be exposed...and it probably wont live up to anybody's (including yourself's) hype...you might even disappoint a few folks who really thought you were what they saw
OR
we can choose to go to the Source of ourselves, the One who thought of us LONG before anyone else did, the CREATOR of all things good and lovely and pure, and beg Him to create us anew each morning, beg Him to expose our crap, expect His greatness to react, pursue Him WHOLEHEARTEDLY, and believe He is WHO HE SAYS HE IS
when we do that, i am confident that He begins, slowly but faithfully, perhaps painfully but lovingly, consistently and wholly taking us from a moment of having beauty to a lifetime of being it.
and it is only then that we can approach with confidence the purpose to which He has called us.
to love and be loved in return.
