Behold the beauty

Morning Prayer:

“One thing I asked of the Lord,

that will I seek after:

to live in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to behold the beauty of the Lord,

and to inquire in his temple.”

Psalm 27:4

Because our bodies are temples to God’s Holy Spirit, poured out on all flesh, we do indeed live all the days of our life in the house of the Lord; are always and everywhere there.

Because God is spirit, and has no physical form, the only way in which we can behold the beauty of the Lord is in that beauty being made manifest in his temple. In me, and in you.

That beauty is made manifest in our brokenness, in the parts we think of as being ugly, those parts of us we don't think are big enough (our love is too small, too thin) and those parts we don’t like about ourselves (such as anger or despair). These are the places God is drawn to, the places where love and light and grace pour in and shine out. The unlikely places made beautiful by our placing ourselves in God’s hands and God taking us up into godself.

This is a holy mystery, revealed to us in the Songs of the Suffering Servant, in the Passion of the Christ.

You are holy ground, beloved and beautiful in God’s eyes. And God’s beauty is revealed in you, broken one.