I’ve had the privilege to take an eight-day vacation to Paris, France. Go with me for a moment. This isn’t an opportunity to brag – it’s an opportunity to testify of how what I thought was a trip for self gratification, and an opportunity to check another thing off of my list of “Things To Do Before I Die,” became an eight-day way of preparing for my 40-day fast.
How?
Well, try to imagine that wherever you look is beauty. Imagine everywhere you turn is art. Imagine… everyone you see is dressed with class and distinction, but not trying to impress anyone. Imagine that there is a place where there is more artistic detail in a pharmacy shop doorway, than there is in any 4-block radius in any part of the inner city of Detroit. Imagine me… being blessed to see it, breathe it, feel it.
I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world is a huge place. And that only equates, at least in my mind’s eye, to the fact that God is that much more bigger. Never again will I hold HIM within just what I think I know of HIM. God, to me, is now gargantuan. God has not shown me not even a glimpse of HIS awesomeness. How dare I fuss and moan like some spoiled child when there are so many people in this world? I thought I knew beauty but it’s more than what’s in the eye of the beholder… there is beauty that is beauty just because. Not because it looks better than something else but because of its own merit. Because someone took the time to put the details in the places chosen by its maker. Because, without it being compared to anything else, it’s beyond comprehension. Imagine the effort it took for that particular thing to be made, and for it to still stand the test of time… the battle of life … even the continuous changes forced upon it by nature, and it still stands… gloriously. Very much like how you’ve stood, stand and will still stand, because of what God put in, on, and about you, so that you could stand… gloriously.
God is our maker! We were fearfully and wonderfully made. We have a reason to be here. Whether it is to cure cancer or if it’s to hold the door open for an elderly woman who feels she doesn’t have the strength in her body to open another door.
There really isn’t anyone in this world that I would call “ugly” again. Seriously. Even if their spirit is bad, it’s not them. It’s the spirit within them acting out. But we have to see them as God sees them… as beautiful. I can’t treat people any kind of way because we were all made in their image (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – Let us make man in our image). Who am I from this day forth to harm (physically or verbally) anyone whom God took painstaking thoughts as to what this person would look, act, live, and be like.
Did you know that you are the epitome of beauty. Beyond comparison, you are the most beautiful you that could ever be made. There are no flaws, no mistakes, no disfigurements… those are simply accents God made to show how many times HE can produce something else so beautiful. Would I ever go back to Paris? Not until I’ve been everywhere else and seen what else the Lord has to show me… because, I didn’t know.
