In Monet's Garden

Beauty

Beauty is all around, yet I seek it more.

I seek to see beauty—beauty that is within and stored

not just laying lightly on surface.

Beauty that emanates from His creation.

Beauty that lasts. That is what I seek.

Beauty in love, beauty in pain.

Beauty in the found and beauty in the stain.

Beauty in the joy and even in the sorrow.

There in Christ is more than enough for today and tomorrow.

Open my eyes to see it, Lord

And better still, my heart to know it’s there

Let my fingers touch it, my mouth taste it, and my ears hear it.

Let my mind and eyes see it, then paint or write it.

So it lingers on.

And when my heart brims and starts to overflow,

let me give it out and let it go.

Beauty can be quick, short lived, but true.

Let not any of it be missed and slip through.

Sometimes camouflaged in ugly, it lay unseen.

Still beauty is there waiting to be gleaned.

Beauty once hung upon an ugly cross.

Pierced with pain and sorrow

Its wicked means for grace through loss.

A necklace hangs lightly with symbol on a chain,

not to adorn the grotesque, or to celebrate His pain.

But to remind me of that beauty and my salvation through it that as gained.

And there it was the first one of today.

A rock pressed hard into the sand.

shaped like a heart from ocean’s harsh play.

Another symbol, maybe, of my own heart—a stone shaped

and hardened by the wicked world’s hand.

Needing Holy Spirit cleansing, waterfalled and washed down to a thirsty land.

Place in me a heart of flesh

And not a heart of stone.

Let beauty of truth and love, be softened and shaped

by You alone.