Painting a crater in the moon…

Posted on April 29, 2010 by Sarah

While driving to my friend’s apartment, I saw the moon, and it–literally–took my breath away. I was so glad that I had brought my camera along with my larger lens because I pulled over on the road and took a picture of the moon right there! I climbed out of my car through the sun-roof and took this picture. I’ll tell you what, too, I don’t even care that I probably looked ridiculous sitting on top of Annie the Accord in order to take this picture.

Here recently, I’ve been writing quite a bit about how God has been revealing His beauty to me, but remember this. That is exactly what I had been praying for last week! Look now. Don’t you see how abundantly He has provided examples of His beauty, too?

Tonight when I saw that moon, it was as if I heard God say, “Sissy, look at this moon I created! Do you see those craters? I painted the lines of each and every single one of those just for you to enjoy!”

Find your enjoyment in God and His beauty. When the day comes when this world passes away, these moments–the times in which we look at God and His creation and say, ‘God, thank you for showing me just how much You love me through revealing Your beauty,’–will be all that we have to take with us.

Who knows, maybe once we reach heaven, we’ll get to enter His painting room and actually get to paint a crater in the surface of the moon…

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10:30 pm

11:30 pm

5:30 am

6:00 am

Don’t worry. Be Joyful!

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Sarah

“So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all;

but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many.”

Ecclesiastes 11:8 (emphasis added)

There will be hard times in your life, but don’t be troubled. God is always with us. Even in these hard times, we should rejoice because God never leaves our side.

So today… Rejoice! Live fully in the life that God has given you (John 10:10) and be glad 🙂 . Glorify Him in all that you do–even in the tough times–and you will find that your life will be even more fulfilling and full of joy than you ever imagined.

“I came so that my joy might be in you and that your joy may be full.”

John 15:11

God and His amazing love for you are always with you so…..

Don’t worry.

Be Filled With His Joy!

Be Joyful!

A Beautifully Broken House

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Sarah

Broken. Overgrown. Left to decay. Mostly unnoticed despite its prominent location off of University Drive, this house stands in relative isolation. Despite its crumbling, exterior walls and other signs of decay, I absolutely love this house! Its condition begs for demolition, and yet this house is still special to me. “Why is this house so special?” This is a question that even I continue to ask myself as I look over my pictures. Here’s why… You see each of the bricks in picture below? Someone laid each and every single one of those and covered them in mortar. Another even painted the brick.

This house is a perfect example of what I was talking about in the post “Redefining Beauty.” The house’s beauty, therefore, does not lie in the perfection of its exterior. The house is beautiful because human hands built it, placing value in it by sacrificing their time and health to build it for another. Although it is deserted now, people once lived in it; this, also, makes it beautiful.

“For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

1 Samuel 16:7

If we have truly become a follower of Christ, it is our daily mission to grow more and more in the likeness of Christ. If this is so, that means that our actions, beliefs, and even persecutions will mirror His. From this verse in 1 Samuel, we learn that part of living our lives after Christ means rejecting our natural impulse to judge based on the appearance and reputation of another, but to see the heart.

Loving like Christ, then, means seeing others with all of their imperfections, yet remembering that Christ also died to save them. We begin to see just how much Christ loves them and how they are precious to Him. We see their hearts, and we are compelled to love them. Christ’s love compels us….

Just like the broken house, we are broken people. Our brokenness–from sin, from unbelief, from the fall–does not prevent the Lord from loving us. Our hearts, this is what He sees when He looks at us, and this is why He continues to love us. We are beautiful in His sight because He simply sees our exterior decay as an even greater back-drop for the display of His glory once He rebuilds us.

We are broken, yet in the sight of Christ, we are beautifully broken…

Here is my camera. Use it, Lord, as an instrument for Your glory.

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Sarah

This year for my birthday, my parents were SUPER generous and gave me an amazing camera for my birthday. As soon as I unwrapped the gift, though, I felt a burden. I saw what kind of camera it was, and I knew that it was expensive. Deep down, I didn’t even want to accept the gift. After all, why did I deserve receiving a camera like this Cannon EOS?

I told my parents that I didn’t deserve it, but they had a different perspective. My parents saw that I could use the camera to take pictures and share them on my blogs as a ministry–another way to share God’s beauty. They told me, “Sarah, it’s how you use the camera that matters.”

This really got me to thinking about life… The truth is that none of us deserve anything. We don’t deserve to have life, let alone a house, a car, a closet full of clothes, etc. Once we are given these things, we should become devoted to using them as avenues to glorify God! We are meant to sacrifice our lives for the sake of glorifying Christ and that means that we must sacrifice our material possession, as well.

Here is the sacrifice of my new camera. I pray that I will use it only to share and spread just how beautiful God is!

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Today, I went to another field of yellow flowers. But this time, there was a barn and horses there, too!