We're back!

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and encouragements while we were away in South Africa. It was an amazing trip filled with amazing times reconnecting with our greater missional community (nieucommunities) AND the organization we work for (CRM). Africa is truly a magical place and we felt so loved by our friends, their neighbors and the african people. It's beauty is second to none and these pictures do not do it justice...














Matthew 10:29-30

Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

...and elephants and mountains and multicolored brothers and sisters and flowers and the wind against your face and coffee around the kitchen table and real life... forever.

spiritual beauty (3)

2 Corinthians 4:5-6

...the glory of God in the face of Jesus...

As an aside to the last couple of posts...

I have often wondered, as a dad, if Jesus' Father in heaven looked down with the same fatherly pride in His eyes as Jesus, a 1 year old (God) child, stumbled across the humble shack of Joesph and Mary?

Did He looked at the boy sitting in the temple asking just the right questions to educated scholars and shake His head in encouraging agreement?

Did He smile as the young man grew in wisdom and stature, turned water to wine, raised the dead, walked on water, with the weary... towards the cross?

I wonder if God the Father, moments before He would turn His eyes away from His beloved Son, gasped at the beauty of the work (of art) that was about to be completed?

And when Jesus arose...

I wonder if the Father stopped all that He was doing...

If He stood with His fiery eyes focused on His only begotten Son...

And clapped His mighty hands in honor, praise and applause at the glory of the masterpiece before Him that was now completed...

And could we hear, if we had been listening, the roars of the oceans and lions saying...

"That's my Son!"

"In HIM I AM is WELL PLEASED!"

so that all creation could hear and see the beauty of the man of sorrows... Jesus... the Son of God.

I know that's what I would do if it were my kids.

spiritual beauty (2)

Psalm 27:4

One thing have I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to inquire in his temple.

Isaiah 53:1-3

Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

I find the picture above quite striking - dismal chunks of gray asphalt covered in beautiful shapes and scribbles of vibrant colorful chalk. Red, green, blue and yellow applied by the hands of children to the most humble of canvases. This mosaic of color, design and childlike passion is common place for those of us with kids. When she is not chatting, my 5 year old daughter (McKenzie) is one such artist. She is so careful, thoughtful and intentional... often with some of the most random of images and colors - a true creative. If an art teacher or critic were to look at these "masterpieces" they would probably point out their immaturity and simplicity... not me - I think they are amazing. They are beautiful, eclectic, random, colorful and fun BUT, what makes them most valuable to me is the hand that prepared them. You see, I love the hand that prepared them because it is connected to a beautiful little girl whom I think the world of AND would do anything for. She is my little gracie.

I wonder if that isn't where we sometimes get confused with Jesus? As amazing as the works (of art) of Jesus were and the life that He lived was, (like all great masters) does real spiritual beauty come when we start prizing the works because of the artist and not the artist because of his works. Is there a place where beauty becomes defined by the hand of the artist... and we love the works because of the hand it is connected too (whether painful or powerful, majestic or ignoble)? I wonder, is that what it means to REALLY behold "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6)... the work of art in the life of the despised and rejected man of sorrows?

spiritual beauty

2 Corinthians 4:5-6

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

I don't normally take so long to get through books but, as of late, I have been reading way too many books at once! I think this may be the result of having been on a bit of a book-buying "fast" - after Christmas I just started reading everything at once... not a good idea. That being said, I am really enjoying this little book by John Piper called God Is The Gospel. It has had some fantastic quotes in it that I have not been able to stop thinking about. One such quote is from chapter 4. Here Piper is reflecting on the verse from 2 Corinthians when he says (sorry for it's length):

The spiritual beauty of Christ is Christ-in-action - Christ loving, and Christ touching lepers, and Christ blessing children, and healing the crippled, and raising the dead, and commanding demons, and teaching with unrivaled authority, and silencing the skeptics, and rebuking his disciples, and predicting the details of his death, and setting his face like flint toward Jerusalem, and weeping over the city, and silent before accusers, and meekly sovereign over Pilate (... John 19:11), and crucified, and praying for his enemies, and forgiving a thief, and caring for his mother while in agony, and giving up his spirit in death, and rising from the dead - ...(John 10:18). Such is the glory of Christ. (pg 66)

I have recently been struck anew by the difference between a knowledge of the "spiritual beauty" of Jesus and knowing about God. I seldom think about the beauty of God as seen in the face (or life) of Jesus. It seems so much easier to think of God's beauty as I look to His creation and His mighty works but to see it in the life of Christ seems... different. It is not that I don't see Christ's works as amazing, triumphant, powerful, transformational, revolutionary... even breath taking, I just don't often think of them as beautiful. But as I have reflected (and read Piper's reflections) on this passage as it talks about this light shining into our hearts and giving the "light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus" I begin to see the life of Christ with a different set of eyes again... the eyes of the heart (Ephesians 1:18) I guess... glory eyes.

And then I realize why Jesus is at the center of so much art, literature and creative revolutions... His life was beautiful. Horrifically, amazingly, tragically, exceptionally... beautiful.

spiritual beauty (2)