A Beauty Glorious

One of my longtime favorite books is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. It is the story of a brother and sister who go on a journey through space to the planet Camazotz, where Charles’ Wallace, Meg’s little brother, gets trapped inside the brainwashing powers of IT. When Meg goes back to rescue him, she is armed only with the prophecy that she has something IT does not, and it will be her only weapon. That final confrontation has stayed with me for years:

“Nonsense,” Charles Wallace said. “You have nothing that it doesn’t have.”

“You’re lying,” she replied, and she felt only anger toward this boy who was not Charles Wallace at all. No, it was not anger, it was loathing; it was hatred, sheer and unadulterated, and as she became lost in hatred she also began to be lost in IT…

With the last vestige of consciousness she jerked her mind and body. Hate was nothing that IT didn’t have. IT knew all about hate…

Suddenly she knew.

She knew!

Love.

That was what she had that IT did not have…

She could stand there and she could love Charles Wallace.

Love??

To be honest, I thought it was a bit lame the first time I read it, sort of a cheap way out for the writer. Trite. Cliché. How can standing there saying, “I love you, I love you,” be any sort of weapon?

But the more I think and read and listen, the more I have come to the conclusion that it has to be true. It just has to be. I’ve seen it. Truth spoken in love can shatter lies and soften hearts. Loving encouragement can be just the thing to motivate someone to be all they were meant to be. Love can reach in and rescue when nothing else can.

Why is this? Perhaps, it’s because it’s unexpected. It’s not a weapon that destroys, but rather one that heals. And by doing so it destroys the disease.

Most of us are familiar with 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul writes that “love never fails” and that “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Romans 12:20-21 even goes so far as to say, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” It looks to me like love may be the most radical weapon we have.

Meg was right. Evil knows all about hate, but it cannot touch love. Love is our privilege and power. Since we alone are made in the image of God, only we have been given the gift of love.

If you want to make a difference in the world, try this: live love. Speak truth boldly, attack injustice fiercely, but in the end just radiate love. If you see those around you the way God does, and treat them as though they are worth his blood, you will leave evil without a leg to stand on. Satan cannot fight love; it disarms him completely. Seek out the darkest places, the blackest lies and heaviest chains, and then just stand there and offer love with everything you have.

I love you. Charles Wallace, you are my darling and my dear and the light of my life and the treasure of my heart. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Slowly his mouth closed. Slowly his eyes stopped their twirling. The tic in his forehead ceased its revolting twitch. Slowly he advanced toward her.

“I love you!” she cried. “I love you, Charles! I love you!”

Then suddenly he was running, pelting, he was in her arms, he was shrieking with sobs. “Meg! Meg! Meg!”

“I love you, Charles!” she cried again, her sobs almost as loud as his, her tears mingling with his. “I love you! I love you! I love you!”

And then watch the miracle happen…because the greatest of these is love.

Last week I finally watched Avatar. I didn’t get to see it in the theater, but even in my living room it was a beautiful movie. The lights and colors of the forest were stunning. The floating mountains draped with vines, the enormous emerald leaves, the lizards that looked like fluorescent water lilies when they flew… It made me think that’s what Eden must have felt like.

After the credits rolled, there was one line that kept rolling around in my head, when Norm was teaching Jake about the Na’vi culture.

JAKE: (practicing) I see you. I see you.
NORM: But it’s not just “I’m seeing you in front of me.” It’s, “I see into you. I See you. I’m accepting you. I understand you.”

I See you.

How often do we really See the people around us? I’m sure you know what it feels like when you’re having a bad day and all you want is for someone to look you in the eyes and ask if you’re doing okay, but then life moves on and no one does. No one seems to really stop and acknowledge you as a person.

After all, isn’t this what we really want? Of course everyone wants to be loved, but a general warm fuzzy isn’t enough. We long to be Seen…to be Known. Intimately. We want to be accepted and understood. And we go through so much of our lives feeling like we’re missing it.

It’s so easy to transfer that feeling to God, as well. Of course he knows everything—he’s God, after all—but does he See me? Is this prayer really heard, or is it more like a message in a bottle, thrown out into the ocean?

Are his eyes really on me?

Grab the nearest Bible (or just go to www.biblegateway.com) and check out Genesis chapter 16. Don’t worry, it’s short. I’ll wait for you.



Now go back to verse 13.

Genesis 16:13 – Hagar thought, “Have I really seen God and lived to tell about it?” So from then on she called him, “The God Who Sees Me.”

The God who Sees me.

This really hit home for me a few months ago. I remember coming home after a powerful encounter with God. He hadn’t answered all of my questions in the way I wanted him to, but he had shown me beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was with me. That night, I wrote a poem/song that went: “I don’t have to know anything, but that you know me. I don’t have to see anything, but that you see me…” I still don’t have all the answers, but I know that I am Seen by the one who made me. And honestly, that’s enough.

I promise you, my sisters, that there is nothing in the world like knowing that God Sees you. His eyes are always on you, and you’re never in his peripheral vision. He hears every word before you speak it. He knows every thought before you think it. He feels every movement of your heart as if it were his own.

He knows your deepest dreams and your deepest pains. Every hurt matters to him. He hold you so close, close to his heartbeat. He has the answer for every question you’ve ever asked. No matter how many times you feel lost, he will always be there to rescue you again.

He understands you. He knows you. He Sees you.


Psalm 139:1-16 CEV
(1) (A psalm by David for the music leader.) You have looked deep into my heart, LORD, and you know all about me.
(2) You know when I am resting or when I am working, and from heaven you discover my thoughts.
(3) You notice everything I do and everywhere I go.
(4) Before I even speak a word, you know what I will say,
(5) and with your powerful arm you protect me from every side.
(6) I can't understand all of this! Such wonderful knowledge is far above me.
(7) Where could I go to escape from your Spirit or from your sight?
(8) If I were to climb up to the highest heavens, you would be there. If I were to dig down to the world of the dead you would also be there.
(9) Suppose I had wings like the dawning day and flew across the ocean.
(10) Even then your powerful arm would guide and protect me.
(11) Or suppose I said, "I'll hide in the dark until night comes to cover me over."
(12) But you see in the dark because daylight and dark are all the same to you.
(13) You are the one who put me together inside my mother's body,
(14) and I praise you because of the wonderful way you created me. Everything you do is marvelous! Of this I have no doubt.
(15) Nothing about me is hidden from you! I was secretly woven together deep in the earth below,
(16) but with your own eyes you saw my body being formed. Even before I was born, you had written in your book everything I would do.

“Shed thirty pounds in just thirty days!”

“Luscious lips with color that lasts.”

“Extend, enhance, and beautify those lashes!”

“It’s so easy—perfect curls every time!”

“The perfect foundation for smooth, flawless skin.”

We’ve seen it, we’ve heard it, we’ve probably even bought the products. The right mascara to magically extend and thicken your eyelashes. The right lotion to smooth and soften your skin. The right hairspray to give you full, bouncy tresses. And countless procedures and miracle diets to make you that ideal 110 pounds, all so you can look just like the dazzling girl in the commercial with perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect hair, and of course, perfect weight.

The Dove Corporation—yes, the cosmetics company—has put together a video that offers an inside look at what might go into creating such an advertisement.



Thinner, smoother, softer, tanner, longer, brighter, bigger… The advertising industry is making a fortune by convincing us that we aren’t something enough. And we believe them, detest all mirrors and cameras, and go buy everything on the shelves, only to start the cycle over again. This notion of "flawless beauty" is killing us.

And the crazy part is—most of what they're presenting is a lie. No one can possibly be that perfect, not even the supermodels. I bet you a pound-sized dark chocolate bar that if you could ask those models what they wish they could change about their appearance, they would be able to tell you a whole list of things right off the tops of their heads.

We live in a world that hypes up plastic beauty. And somewhere along the way, in between the Barbies and the magazines and the TV shows, we’ve forgotten what it means to be truly beautiful.

The truth is, genuine beauty comes from within. I know, I know, it’s cliché, but it’s God’s honest truth. When you carry yourself with a confidence that says you respect yourself and others, when you live life with love and joy, you can’t help but be beautiful. It’s a beauty that isn’t painted or photoshopped or dieted into you, but a radiant, glorious beauty that explodes from the inside out.

I can hear you now: “I know all that, Caitlyn, I’ve known it all my life! But it doesn’t exactly help when I see Tyra Banks in all the magazines, and then I look in the mirror and all I see is what’s wrong: wrong hair, wrong clothes, wrong skin, wrong teeth, wrong everything!”

I get it. Trust me, I do. I’ve been there thousands of times. It’s the curse of being a female in the modern-day Western world. Heck, it might be the curse of being female, period. Even when we know that we should be focusing on inner beauty, still we crave after this flawless magazine image. Still we think that we don’t measure up.

Can I share something with you that absolutely blew my mind?

Song of Songs 4:7 “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”

Wait a minute.

Back up. Read that again.

“You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”

Wow.

The God of the universe, the God who created me, the God whose opinion is the only thing that matters…says that I am flawless. He doesn’t see any of the things I wish I could change about myself. He sees only perfect beauty.

Don’t believe me? Can you imagine God looking at you and shaking his head, saying, “Well, I tried, but I guess I ran out of Pretty n’ Perfect Powder that day. I must have used it all on Tyra. It’s really too bad about that face.”

NO! God looks at you and says, “Look at her! That one right there, look at her! She is perfect! Perfect! She makes my heart beat faster. Breathtaking, stunning, captivating… Beautiful. Flawlessly beautiful.”

Barbie’s got nothing on you, sistah. The King of the universe has called you beautiful. And it has nothing to do with makeup or skin care or fashion sense. It has to do with you. Because he made you in his image and he loves you exactly the way you are.

Flawless.

I don't know about you, but I recognize this. This is for that moment when the world fades away and suddenly only one thing is important... suddenly, it doesn't matter where you are, because it's like you're not even there... heaven is invading earth, and all that matters is worshiping him.

Pour it out.

Hey guys, thanks to those of you who entered to win a copy of Epic by John Eldredge! It really is one of my favorite books and I hope everyone can snag a copy at a bookstore or library and give it a read.

I drew a winner from our pool and the proud new owner of Epic is...Leanna!

Leanna, I'll be emailing you for your address so I can send you that book ASAP. :) Love you, sister.

We'll be doing more giveaways in the future, so keep checking back!

--Caitlyn

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to tell you that I’m writing this in the middle of a noisy school cafeteria with about thirty things on my mind. I was up late at a meeting, then I had to finish a paper, so I only got about four hours of sleep before I was flying out the door to catch my carpool to school. Sometime really soon, I need to go by the missions office to check on some fundraising, write two skits for my Mexico trip,
Be still…
write a few more scenes of my A Little Princess adaptation, prepare to lead a small group, study my script for the scene I need to rehearse tonight, email my trip leader some info he wanted, read a ridiculously dense chapter of Theory/Theatre and write a response to it,
Be still…
and probably read a few more chapters that I am forgetting about. And this is an easy day. Just wait another month or two till finals hit, and I will be inches away from an epic death by homework…
Be still…
Oh, hello. Were you trying to say something, God? I’m sorry, could you speak up? I’m in the middle of texting, and I have to write this blog, and I have my music on, and I’m worried about this other thing…
Be still and know that I am God.
…
…
…
Now there’s an idea.

So often in the middle of my craziness I forget to take that time to just chill out with God. Even when I do spend time with him I sometimes feel like I have to get something done. I need to read a couple Bible chapters, I need to pray for a huge list of people, I need to pray for my campus and my church and my city and my nation…

BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.

Oh. Yeah.

Sometimes, that’s enough. Sometimes, there comes a point where the world can wait and GOD, and only God, deserves my focus. Homework needs to get done. Bible study and intercession are both excellent uses of time. But sometimes…

Breathe. Wait. Listen. Relax and let it go for a while.

Take some time to just be with Me.

It’s enough to just lay down, close my eyes, and remember…

Yes. You are God. You are God. Thank you. I love you.

I love you, too.

Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God.”

I'm not ashamed to admit: I love the Twilight saga. The books, not necessarily the movies. (I haven't even seen New Moon yet.) I wrote in my last blog about how our stories reflect God's Great Story, and I think there's a lot in Stephanie Meyer's vampire romance series that echoes our relationship with God.

My dear friend Sapphira Adi has pulled out a few of these ideas in her blog. I hope you find it as enlightening as I did! http://www.elyonscircle.com/blogs/SapphiraAdi/?p=968