To abide in the Father's love is to choose to see beauty, for it is God's tracings.
Abide. Remain. Nestle.
In the arms of love, of overwhelming grace, of astounding beauty.
Tonight I drove my little sister out to the stables where she rides horses, out into the countryside where the fields abound and the wildflowers are better dressed than any celebrity you've ever seen. We spent some time making sure her horses were keeping warm in this (bipolar) Texas weather and meandering around the stables, my eleven-year old sister's home away from home. For me, it is the soccer field, for her, the riding trails. I love this, that we can teach each other about our happy places, appreciating one another in our own elements.
I don't really remember the exact moments leading up to the one that took my breath away, but I remember turning around and there is was: a watercolor painting spread before my eyes, more glorious than the Sistine Chapel (I can actually make that statement, I've been) or any masterpiece I've ever seen. The colors simply overwhelmed everything else around them, streaking across one another as if a paintbrush had taken a stroll with a butterfly, the two dancing across their canvas as if they were best friends on cloud nine or a couple having their first dance.
Deep blues morphing into teals, swirling into the sun's rays that somehow sent oranges beaming into yellows, which hit the blues again, resulting in purples with hints of pink. I don't even know how, because yellow and blue make green, but purple is what was presented before me. Purple, my favorite color since I was six years old (or maybe earlier).
How could the painting before me not take my breath away? It was stunning.
I'd traveled this way many times before and probably passed it by without a second glance. Tonight, however, it hit me, hard. It was beautiful, and all I could do was marvel. Beauty is all around us, but we have to choose to see it as beautiful.
Not that this changes it's worth or if it is beautiful or not, but whether that beauty and wonderment takes root in our hearts is our choice.
As I gazed upon the lovely picture before me, I found I was surprised. It hit me that lately I had been losing opportunities of catching and taking note of beauty. I hadn't been marveling. I had stopped allowing wonderment to impact me.
Tonight, I marveled, and I murmured a thanks to God for all things beautiful. Joy, peace, love.
I thanked God for beauty, for simplicity, and for reminders to simply stop and abide in His presence, a presence that strikes me as overwhelming in a world, in a society, that glorifies busyness and craziness and egotism. I let my gaze fall upon beauty. I thanked God for the moment (and took a mental and tangible photograph).
And hoped that Heaven is filled with purple skies, because I like them very much.
No filter, truthfully.
'Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting'.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
