Wot is beautiful?

So the other day I held a 3 month old baby, and as I twiddled her fingers and spoke the international language of baby to her i couldn’t help but wonder what the future held for this life. Born into situations that for some would be too much, into culture where to have just a little is to have enough, to be brought into an environment of different views on religion and how to live life. I prayed that this life, no matter where it ends up, that God would find her. I couldn’t help but look into her tiny eyes and see beauty.

This year I’ve learned how to see beauty in all manner of things, in high-rise block of flats overlooking the manor where drugs and crime run the streets, standing on the crown of Smyrna praying for rain in that city. I’ve found it in a personality, that unexpectedly took me by surprise, but with passion for life, enthusiasm and desire exploded into every situation good bad, happy and sad and I’ve learned how to see the beauty in that. In standing over Gjakova, all too aware of the desperate poverty surrounding me but calling out, joining with God and asking for a change, from peace hope and identity to be found. Some things are simply, just, beautiful.
In the eyes of a young life, just lots a family member but excited to eat well for a day. And in a beggar, who didn’t have to go hungry, who’s whole persona changed before our eyes. And iv seen it in humility, of people that love Jesus, that lavish that love on others that live as if the spreading of the word all rested on their shoulders, but who return at the end of the day to the same settings and situations of the very same people they are striving to help. And in the heart of someone’s story, a story of faith, of struggle of lose, of heart breaking situations of desperate times when the there seemed like there was no hope, and no way out, but then in holding on to the only hope that is ‘’...quite frankly, guaranteed..’’

Where do you see beauty? Do you stop to observe for long enough, do you thank God for these little (and sometimes massive, daily miracles of faith hope and peace standing out amongst a crooked and deprived generation with everything they are screaming Jesus into their environment and flooding the dark that surrounds’ them with blinding life giving light from the very author of the story.

Find something beautiful today. It’s not hard.