past, present, and future.

Whenever I write things down, I grow, but I also have to go back and re-read where I was before. This is an somewhat painful, but good thing. ;) I enjoy looking back on the journey though. Sometimes, upon reading something I wrote even just a few months before will reveal some nugget that I learned or experienced that helps my present self. Then I want to high-five past self. Sometimes, though, I just want to slap past self. I think it's better to high-five her, though, because she kept plowing on. She helped future self even if present self doesn't always think so.

How great are the plans of our God! He prepares us for things in such a subtle way long before we actually go through whatever it is we're heading towards. Our lives are just part of his brilliant work of art, his symphonic hands mold us in ways that make us more radiant than we could ever be on our own. He inspires me to do my own art to demonstrate what He has done in my life and in the lives of others.

the glass piece I finished over the summer and my lovely sister behind.

I haven't talked much about this piece unless someone asked. Charlene saw me working on it over the summer and she thought it looked creepy. ;) I suppose in a way it is. In case you can't read it at a glance, the paint is done around letters spelling the word "beauty." The color is purposely meant to look like blood (thanks to Trevor Tracy for helping me pick it out) and the pieces of glass are all glued on a larger piece at jagged angles to appear as though recently broken and scattered. Glass sometimes causes bleeding (although I only cut myself once while working on this!). There are probably several interpretations or explanations I could give for my choices in this piece, but my most general one is this:  beauty sometimes comes from brokenness. In fact, I would daresay the most lasting beauty does come from its share of bleeding and transparentness. Take Jesus for example. His body was shredded and hung on a tree to give us life, and life everlasting. He bled. He was transparent. His blood covered all sin and renewed our chance at life, love, and hope. The most beautiful thing in the world was a bloody sacrifice. He endured what we deserve, he experienced every single kind of pain we could ever imagine--including rejection and loneliness--so he could show us he empathized in a way no one else could. The way no one else would. Our sin was transparent to him, but his blood covered it so all we saw was his beauty and glory.

Beauty is all around us, yes, but especially in the broken places. For it is in these broken places that the most beautiful thing of all shines the brightest. Jesus is our light in the dark and brokenness is dark, my friends. His blood is what covers it, not ours. All the bleeding we do whether metaphorically or literally for brokenness means nothing, whereas his means everything. That's a bit of what this piece is about.

His beauty covers my past, present, and future self. She is beautiful because of Him. He doesn't make junk. He only knows how to make art, even if it includes our junk.