God made beauty

God made beauty. I don’t understand it, but He did. He could take a pile of moss covered rock and some stifling humidity and make a romantic fresh feeling fogy mountain range. He could take miles of sand in scorching heat and make a desert so vast and rich with color we find ourselves in amazement. Try taking a black sheet of paper and dabbing it with white spots and see how many people gaze into it’s depth hand in hand with their lover and wonder at it’s vastness, yet God creates a sky that mocks all our thoughts of grander. Likewise He takes us, humans, (a word we use to define our nil limitations) and as weak as we are in the raw, and tainted as we are in our sin, without even more than a passing desire to be anything other than swine who wallow and writhe in our own filth and excrement, and cleans us, and heals us, and makes us new creatures in Him. God has, as it were a fetish for beauty, but there is nothing beautiful that He doesn’t make, there is no beauty aside from His creation. I cannot take credit for my body for He made it, no credit for my service for He not only commanded but enabled me. There is nothing I can call my own and yet I gloat in my ignorance, I strut in my gifts as if they were of my own making, my accomplishments as if they were anything other than God’s reanimation of a dead corps. I have no breath aside from God. May God be my life breath. May I know His presence and power in every step I take. May I realize my frailty, that I am nothing but dust without God.

God loves me. He says I am fearfully and wonderfully made. He says I am pure and spotless in His site. He bids me come boldly before His throne. He says I am justified by faith, cleansed by Christ’s blood. He sent His Son to die, He sent His Spirit to live in us. Who am I? I know my sins! They beset me. I feel as though I cannot be free. I strive only to fall again. I work on one area only to find I’ve neglected 99 others. There is no help but of God. There is no safety aside from His hand. I was dead in trespasses and sins, but now am alive through Christ Jesus. What does that mean? A dead man cannot help himself. He cannot seek refuge. He has even lost his ability to heal himself or call for help. I am a new creature. My spirit is wiling but the flesh is weak. I long ago gave up on myself. I long ago saw that there was no hope of improvement through any tangible self effort. But in my agony, striving not anymore for success, but only out of obedience, God lifted me out of the darkness; He showed me that He had made even the flaws for His honor and glory. Through my weakness He is made strong. I can do not but glorify Him. I can do nothing but proclaim His love and grace for it is the only reality I know. I have no life, no safety, no hope and no peace aside from His infinite hand which reaches past my finite comprehension and changes everything within me.

Will I ever learn to rest in His love? To rest in his arms. To not turn my face in shame. To not hide my sin before His righteousness but allow Him to wash me. Will I never learn? He has pursued me beyond all comprehension and cleansed me time and time again. Pulling me out of the shadows into the light. I have learned as I huddle in the corner to long for that hand that I know will soon so gently free me yet again from my guilt and yet will I never come to Him willfully, will I never love Him more than my vices? Are my fears so joyous or my sorrow so warm what I must be pulled from them like a dog from his vomit. This nature that besets me, I long to be free from it. I long for His touch. Lord make me; force me please, into your will.