...Whatever is Lovely...

Start at the beginning

Go looking for honey, and chances are good you'll stir up some bees.

Despite my declaration that thick skin is a necessity, my heart is easily bruised by people I've loved with reckless abandon.  (And I mean every bit of that cheesy-sounding sentence.)  Stings multiply quickly, and they swell until, like Peter on the waves, I cry out praying that I would quit being the common denominator in a series of never-will-be-the-sames.  And while change is certainly good, it seems people forget that we live in the wreckage of that change while learning to withstand the fire of the "adjustment period."  Sometimes, the real adjustment is the wake-up call that there are petty people in the world who will quit when they've never tried.  But that, too, is a sting.

Few of those things are lovely.  Actually, I pretty positive that absolutely none of those things are lovely in any sense of the word.

So I've been trying to reconcile the command that we should think on truth, nobility, righteousness, purity and loveliness to the reality that our lives may look a little less lovely and a little more wrecked at times.  Then what?

Then we know we are redeemed, and that water and fire cannot drown or burn us (Isaiah 43:1-2).  Then our focus gravitates to the year of the Lord's favor, and his anointing to heal the broken (Isaiah 61).  Then we revel in the fact that loveliness doesn't come from perfection, but from the precious gift housed in the shoddiest vessel available (2 Corinthians 4:7).

In the process, I guess I'm starting to see that the loveliest picture is generally made from fragments and shards that will never go together the same way again.  Who would want them to when your God is "doing a new thing"? (Isaiah 43:19).

Perhaps the loveliest picture we will ever see is the broken redeemed.  Think about such things.

...Whatever is Lovely...Part 2