I love the ability to see beauty! Not just in the aesthetically pleasing, but everyday moments and events in life. A few years ago I met a girl who said the word beautiful a lot. She was just a really positive person, and while I had never heard “beautiful” used as a response to much of what she used it for, I really liked it. Then, after hanging out with her for a while, it began to rub off on me. I came home, and I couldn’t stop saying it either. Many people called me out on it, saying it was an incorrect use of the word, and so I soon stopped, but I want to bring it back. I recently began saying it more which led to a close friend of mine asking me today if I should save that word for things that were truly beautiful. This of course left me to explain why the amount and way in which I used the word, to me, was fine. There is more to beauty than the aesthetic. Sure there is a lot of bad in this world, but God originally created it all as good, and while the world has stained it with evil, there is still a lot of good and beauty in it. And not just the more easily seen beauty of this world, though, sunsets, mountain top views, flowers, and star filled skies are all very important for us to notice. But God himself is beautiful, and when His glory is seen by our small actions, that is beautiful. His blessings and bestowed talents are also beautiful gifts to us as well, and when we use them it is beautiful. In scripture we are called His masterpiece, and I don’t know about you, but when I walk into a museum, and see some of the masterpieces that some of the great artists have done, I can’t help but stand in awe of their beauty. So if we are His masterpieces, there has to be beautiful things throughout our lives, and what a shame that would be if they went unnoticed. Acts of kindness, small achievements, smiles, and, laughs, these are all things that we need to notice and see the beauty in. A kind deed is very beautiful, as are the meals my mother makes every day, but how often do I say in response to the set table, beautiful!! Sure there are some things that are universally seen as beautiful, but I think that as God opens our eyes we should be able to see beauty in more than just the aesthetic. An old Confucius proverb is that “everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” I think there is a lot of truth in that statement. I think if we take a closer look, more often than not, we will see something of immense beauty. An Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, also once wrote that “beauty awakens the soul to act.” If this is true, than wouldn’t there be great benefit in noticing more of the beauty around us? If we see the beauty in kindness, and our desire is to be beautiful, as I think most do desire, than shouldn’t acknowledging the beauty of it cause us to want to be more kind as well? I want to respond with the word beautiful more so that I can be reminded of all of the beauty that surrounds me. I want this to be my response so that my life in turn will be inspired to act in these ways of beauty. And lastly, but most important, I want to respond with the word beautiful to call what God daily does in this world, for what it is. Sure we may have splattered paint across His masterpiece, but He is continually restoring and renewing His creation into a beautiful masterpiece, and I want to show others this by pointing out its beauty.

I love Thanksgiving. I mean I love this concept of eating lots of good food with friends and family until you can’t eat anymore, and then eating some more, but the real meaning of thanksgiving is something I love even more. The concept of setting aside a day just to be thankful, and then celebrate with friends and family just how much there is to be thankful for. I know that meaning can sometimes get lost amongst all the turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes, but what if on thanksgiving, we filled ourselves with gratitude? In the Message version of Ephesians 5 it says, “Thanksgiving is our dialect.” I think that is such a beautiful phrase. Could you imagine a place where the accent with which one spoke in was that of thanksgiving? Where everything they spoke had at least a hint of gratitude. Language is part of our identity whether we want it to be or not. It tells of where we’ve been, and the culture with which we were brought up in. I’m always captivated when I see someone of one race speak with the accent of another. It speaks louder than even their appearance. So what if thanksgiving really was our dialect. Maybe it wouldn’t speak of where we’ve come from, but it sure would tell of where we are going. Our lives may have had their share of hardship, but we’ve been saved from that, and the one who saved us, has also given us so much and so now the way we talk sure tell of that. We have so much to be grateful for that the very way in which we speak should be saturated with it. Maybe we forgot about the true meaning of thanksgiving a few days ago, or maybe we didn’t celebrate it as fully as we should have, but don’t worry, for gratitude is something we should celebrate more than one day a year. It should be something that is a part of us each day, just like the way we talk is something that is a part of us daily. And so with that I challenge you, starting with today, let thanksgiving become your dialect.

I love great love stories!! I mean who doesn’t, but this weekend as I looked for a good tear-jerker to watch with my friend I wondered why I liked movies that made me cry. I realized that it’s because they are usually the ones with the greatest love stories. When the characters have to go through everything in order to be with the one they love it tells a story of the extent of their love. I think I like these tear jerkers because it shows how strong some love is. So strong that it’s worth the heartache, and I want to know that that kind of love exists. And yet it does. Jesus showed us that Great love when He died on the cross for us. He is the greatest love story of all time, but are we making it even better. There are those sad stories where one character loves the other, and goes through everything to show it, and they are amazing, but they always end with tears of sadness because the one who deserves the love doesn’t get the girl. Those ones just make me extra sad, my favorite are the ones where both the guy and girl go through everything for the other, they both give up so much in hopes of bringing happiness to the other. You know the story where the wife sells her hair in order to buy a chain for the husband’s watch and the husband sells his watch to buy her a comb. It’s a terribly sad story, and yet it makes me so happy, because it tells of a love so real that both give up their best, so that the other can have more. God did that for us, He gave us His best. He gave us His only son, but what have we given Him. Have we given Him our best, our most treasured? Some of us might have given him some nice things, but how many of us have truly given Him our best? And yet that is what we are called to do if we want to truly follow Him. We have to give up everything. We have to give up living our lives for ourselves, we have to abandon all attachments to this world, and just follow Him.  The love story, The Gift of the Magi, is so beautiful because their love for the other was worth more than what they had. It was worth more than what they were giving up.  When God went to His disciples and told them to follow Him, they could, because the lives they were giving up, were worth less to them, then the lives they would gain by following Him. What about our lives is so precious that they aren’t worth giving up, for Him? What are we holding on to that is more precious than Him? That’s the question I need to answer, and then re-evaluate my value system, because I honestly can’t think of a anything better, than Him, and yet I can’t seem to let go. I love great love stories, and while the story God has written me into is already great, I want to contribute to it. I want my life to be a love story back to Him.