We all deal with so much pain. Our world has been distorted from the fall. Beauty was shattered into bits and trampled beneath the feet of humanity and we sadly try to scoop it up and attempt to glue it back together with our own concoctions so we can see what it once was. We crave the glory of God’s masterpieces that once were. We know the past beauty as home, though we have only seen bits and pieces of it. We look at God’s face and with each glance he hands us a new piece of it wrapped carefully in his love, passed gently so as we grab at it we do not slice our fingers on the sharp edges we created with our chaos.
The past few days I have been handed bundles of these precious pieces and I am lost on what to do with them. They have so much beauty, but holding them rips my hands and the blood smudges places that were once white. I sit to view them, but it makes my eyes well up in tears because the glare of them is almost too much to handle.
Pain was never meant to exist. We weren’t supposed to ever have our fingers gashed because we simply tried to hold God’s beauty. It was supposed to be a gift only known as truth of what always is and always was. A present not recognized because that is all that existed. But pain exists in each of our personal universes ever since Adam and Eve chose to hide from God in the beginning of time, and now we have multiple, hard decisions that we must make because of that. We can push through the the hardships and pain to allow God to re-create within us how we were supposed to be. We can let ourselves bleed and allow Him to dress our wounds and heal them with his divine elixir. We are able to partner with Him in re-creating His most beautiful and magnificent work of art: ourselves.
Or we can choose to withhold. We so easily withhold from the Greatest Lover of our hearts. We could withhold our past. Withhold who we have always known ourselves to be. Withhold our love simply because it is seemingly more comfortable. To trust God with our pain, the pain we have always known was never meant to exist but remained so personally dear and close seems a dangerous endeavor. C.S Lewis once said in The Chronicles of Narnia, “Of course [Jesus] isn’t safe, but he is good.” Giving ourselves up is not a lovely walk among the flowers. It hurts. Our fingers get pricked by the thorns as we try to smell the roses. Our feet burn on the sand as we walk to the calming waves of the ocean, and we must get our hands dirty as we toil to plant the seeds of fruit we may not get to see for years to come. Nevertheless, goodness comes. We taste the sweet juice of its fruit as it drips down our throats, the cool freshness of it as the waves wash us clean, and our reward is the intoxicating aroma of it as its petals tickle our nose.
We are also given the opportunity to join others as they pick up pieces of their own personal masterpiece. God has given the freedom and bestowed the blessing of allowing us to feel the pricks and prods of another’s pain so they do not have to be alone in the shards created. Not always by themselves, though never fairly by a cruel harsh world. To give so much of yourself and experience hurt to not only survive, but continue to create and see new things. This can only be possible with the glue of a timeless master artist. To not only allow continued work on your own piece of art, but help others with their own and receive joy amidst all of it that you will one day see an end is a heavenly present. To gain eyes to see the beauty past the pain in front of us is a gift from God and a personal choice.
We must choose into it. We must choose whether to go through the pain to see miraculous beauty or stay where we are and only see glimpses. We do not have to kneel down in the mess and and dig into the shards. We can choose to stay standing where we believe we are safe only allowing a prick to our toes when we forget to keep on our shoes, but the pieces will always remain under our feet. The Master Artist our Heavenly Lover and Great Father will always be there holding onto us until we are ready to begin our dangerous and beautiful journey to see the everlasting monument that was made ages ago. Resurrected and restored to its full glory.
Deuteronomy 30:3-6 “God, your God, will restore everything you lost; he’ll have compassion on you; he’ll come back and pick up the pieces from all the places where you were scattered. No matter how far away you end up, God, your God, will get you out of there and bring you back to the land your ancestors once possessed. It will be yours again. He will give you a good life and make you more numerous than your ancestors. God, your God, will cut away the thick calluses on your heart and your children’s hearts, freeing you to love God, your God, with your whole heart and soul and live, really live.”
