hmm, ugly-beautiful, eh? this is one I wish I'd looked at ahead of time, and contemplated throughout the day. finding beauty in the ugly is not my forte, especially in myself. I prefer the pretty, shiny, neat, and orderly, right alongside the safe, happy comfortable. Ugly makes me uncomfortable, and sometimes sad.
But today's gifts fit with today's sermon at church - another passage from 1 Corinthians in our "messy community of grace" series. If you want to hear about gifts ugly-beautiful, let's talk about the church: a community of sinners, growing in grace but definitely not-yet sanctified; people broken and bruised, seeking healing and hope; and others (myself included) sometimes still breaking and bruising.
#74: my church, and every church I've ever been a part of; ugly in her brokenness, in the way we sometimes treat each other, yet beautiful in the glimpses she sometimes gives of the hope, healing, community, and love of Christ we'll one day know and give and see perfectly.
#75: "I know your heart, and I've made it good." A God-inspired thought I had last weekend, and what a perfect promise in the midst of seeing a fair bit of sin, brokenness, and failure in my heart. How good it is that He knows me, and yet makes me good!
#76: because I can go a day without being grateful for something food related, my ugly-beautiful today was some kale in these chicken salad/kale/cabbage wraps I made for a friend and I. kale's not exactly beautiful (at least this stalk wasn't - just a little yellowed and wilted), but it sure does taste good!
3 comments:
thanks for coming up with good things for this day - I tend to ignore the ones that aren't easy and list a few "generic" thank you's - you made me think a bit deeper...
Thanks, Mom! I've loved the hard prompts; I realized the other day they're helping me see that literally everything is a gift, not just the fun obvious things.
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