04.14.26
I’ve got this heart for beauty (in other words, I’m a softie). And do you know the worst part about it?
It’s having to put my heart out there for people who don’t have hearts for beauty. The things that are precious to me I have to watch these people ignore or, sometimes, scorn. It feels like being spit on. The room is gray. Their faces grayer. And in seconds, they wither my will to love that was cultivated by Him—beautiful Him—over the course of years.
For as long as I can remember, I have loved the beautiful stuff of Life. But these things that have so moved my heart, I am not allowed to keep to myself. That would be my preference, of course. But He has put me in a season wherein these things are the best that I’ve got to offer. And what else am I supposed to do but offer my best?
I have learned many a time from Abel that to have faith is to offer my best. I am learning now that to offer my best is to let go of what happens to it. It was never about the things themselves. It was always about the One they led me to. I don’t trust the things; I trust Him. Offering can never mean keeping. It is the giving up of a thing that was never meant to last forever, sometimes to its total incineration. But what does last forever is the relationship for which the offering had to be made—the covenant. This covenant is for keeping. And for it, everything has to die. I have to die. Because the dying is the keeping.
I know, because He did it and set the terms—died so that now the covenant lasts forever. And if just so that I can have more of Him, I need to do that too now, and I can; my heart can die a thousand times by others’ ignorance and scorn, and I couldn’t care less. I won’t hold it against them or anyone else. After all, it really isn’t their doing; it’s mine. I’m offering this heart for beauty, and I know better now that that means I go to its death; I go to my being kept by the Beautiful One.
