Beautiful is in the Making... |
"Clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God." |
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The Beatitudes (BZV)
True beauty lies in the Beatitudes.
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"For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom"
C.S. Lewis
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The Beautiful Cross?
What is at the heart of the cross?
Forgiveness.
Jesus used his final breaths to speak the words, “Father forgive them.” He could have said anything in that moment. He could have spoke to his mother final words of goodbye, he could have spoke to his disciples encouraging them to follow the things he had taught them, he could have spoke to the crowd to stand by his innocence. Yet, he chose to speak to the very ones who put him on that cross …and in his final breaths he breathed forgiveness to them.
Forgiveness? But why?
When Christ offered forgiveness on the cross, he spoke the only thing that was greater than the injustice that had been done to him that day. The only thing that could rise above and cover the ugliness. Through forgiveness, he changed what would have been a painful memory into a story of beauty. A story of forgiveness that opens the way for love instead of hate.
You see, Jesus on the cross is not beautiful! Jesus being unjustly accused is not beautiful! Jesus being betrayed by one close to him is not beautiful! Jesus dying for the sins that were not his is not beautiful!
No. That is not beautiful. But forgiveness, that is what is beautiful.
Without forgiveness the cross ends in tragedy. Without forgiveness the cross ends in pain. Without forgiveness the cross ends in injustice. Without forgiveness the way to God’s love would not be open.
Christ is forgiveness.
God is love.
In John 14:6 Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.”Therefore, no one comes to Love except through Forgiveness. And Love has the power to cover a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).
This is why the cross does not remind us of pain but of love. This is why the cross is beautiful. And this is where we find hope that everything does not have to be as it seems. We don’t have to remain the victim—of others or ourselves. Forgiveness is always an option, and in forgiveness there is power to overcome ugliness with beauty.
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Holy (Wedding Day) - The City Harmonic
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"The answer is that, no, we can’t just get over it, because you evidently did not understand what you did in the first place. You did not make a mistake! And therein lies the problem. If one makes a mistake then an apology is usually sufficient to get things back on an even keel. However - and this is a big ‘however’ - most people do not even know why their apology did not seem to have any effect. It is simply that they did not make a mistake; they made a choice … and never understood the different between the two."
The Noticer
(Source: thenoticerproject.com)
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Photography by Josh Adamski
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“It’s a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.”— Naguib Mahfouz, Sugar Street (via itsfromabook)
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“‘Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid’ - Fyodor Dostoyevsky”
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“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
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He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3)
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LOVE IS MORE THAN A SONG.
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“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish it’s source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies...”
