Beautiful Things

Friday of the First Week of Advent

“One thing I ask of the LORD… That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD and contemplate his temple.” – Psalm 27

“I am looking for things that are beautiful.” The eye rolls, the snarky replies, the know-it-all smirks. I get this kind of teenager attitude a lot from my four-year-old daughter. So many of the outfits I suggest for school or pajamas I offer that are seasonally appropriate are considered “not beautiful enough” for her. She even makes up words to reject my suggestions. “That is too harbor-saucy.” I still do not know what that means.  Recently, I discovered her painstakingly coloring her school shoes in with Crayola crayons. “They were too beige.” After a moment of frustration, I found myself gazing on loveliness. I took pictures of the formerly beige shoes to remember this moment in time.  Each day she has proudly worn them, I have smiled at her whimsy and appreciated her unique personality. 

Like her school shoes, I have felt beige, tired, and shabby. I am constantly lacking: at spending quality time with my husband and kids, at keeping the housework under control, at getting Christmas gifts purchased and mailed, and staying on top of important deadlines. Each day is filled with distractions and reminders of my own failures. As 2020 reaches a crescendo, I am tired and worn. I feel just a little too beige.

When I am discouraged by the current state of affairs or tempted to judge other people’s actions, the words of today’s Psalm shift my perspective. “That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD and contemplate his temple.” This world around us, even right now, is the place where God is in-dwelling in humankind. It is the world the Christ-child enters into.

I imagine God is looking into humanity: with all its fighting, suffering, illness, and loneliness. I imagine God seeing beyond those challenges to the dignity within each person, to the care between neighbors, to the willingness to go (far) beyond our individual and collective comfort zones for the sake of one another. 

Like my artist of a daughter, God sees the potential waiting to be unleashed- even within me. God looks into my beige heart and sees a myriad of color. “I am looking for something beautiful.” 

What if that something beautiful God is seeking, is me?