The world is beautiful. I pity the man who fills his life only with what is right in front of him. How long I have lived this life of pity. So insecure and infatuated with what I could put in my hands, that I could not bear to look up and see. Precious is the gift of seeing the world and I am more fortunate to not only get to see, but behold. Time, then, is the factor that multiplies what I see into something increasingly beautiful. These dying moments are everywhere for the man who can find the strength to pick up his weary head and just look, for a time. To find beauty in this dying world causes my heart to stir because part of my heart desires the uniqueness of a moment in time. To know that this moment can never happen again increases the value of the experience. But, then, another part of my heart desires for the experience to be unending. There is a tragedy in these dying moments, because I cannot shake the feeling, deep in my heart, that they are always cut short by death. They appear to be immortal because as I experience them, time does not matter. But, as always, these moments that we as humans can get so easily lost in; these timeless moments, are always subjected to time. And my heart breaks because I know that something has been lost. The flower always wilts. The statue crumbles. The body fails. And yet, my heart is stirred to be more intentional in finding the value of these dying moments, no matter in what stage I find them. Young, fresh, and new or old, rotting, and angry.
This part of the world, when one simply sees it, resembles America. What I have realized, is that I have only been able to see what is familiar. At the same time, when looking past the surface, this land is nothing like America. Behind the fronts of stores and inside the automobiles that speed past me as I walk past these stores, are people who have lived completely different lives then the one I have lived or will live. And, I have no problem with this because I have found a certain dying beauty in these people. They carry an identity, as a nation, that I do not detect in my fellow Americans. Could this be because my nation is so young? Or, maybe because our culture is so disconnected from our elders. This commentary, although useful for other things, is not my point. To see that this country is so beautiful, and not at the core, or anywhere near the core, a cooperate sellout to Americanization is incredibly refreshing. To find these dying moments that are so abundant has given me an appreciation for the place in life I am right now. The Father is blessing me everyday with these little moments. I am falling in love with how the Father uses these little dying moments to scatter truth about him. The great irony is that what seems so small and beautiful in my eyes, is in reality incredibly meaningful and glorious to the Father because they have eternal implications.
Awake oh sleeper and see what the Father is doing, both in the obviously big ways and in the small, beautiful, dying moments.
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