Beneath the Fog

I gaze out large picture windows to the frosted world beyond. Fog is frozen in time.

Everything is covered with tiny crystals just waiting for a shaft of light to set things sparkling.
It's a wonderland of beauty.

It's a world of potential…

Thoughts swirl softly. These snowflakes of the mind quickly absorb all external sounds as I contemplate life…

There seems to be a parable gazing back at me through the window.
A parable of my life. A parable for me.








This fog? Sometimes it grows thick, enshrouding me in a gray blanket. I cannot see the mountains in the distance or the sun above the clouds, yet I just have to trust they are there.

Then the fog freezes, and I shiver as crystals form. It seems my life has gone from bad to worse.  I'm stuck beneath the fog while icy fingertips paint me with the ice of trial.

Yet when the fog lifts, sun pierces the clouds and I am set sparkling. And I realize that the freezing fog was what made me beautiful.

God creates jewels in foggy shadows.

He calls me His jewel.

The God-Treasure

I've seen many styles of boxes in my life…

Woven boxes. Cardboard boxes. Wooden boxes.
Metal boxes. Jeweled boxes. Ceramic boxes. Glass boxes.

And although they might be a varied as butterflies, they have this one thing in common.
They are boxes.

You are a box. I am a box.

Some of us are bedecked with natural beauty, a jewel-like appearance.
Others feel like moving boxes, scarred by rough treatment, defaced with permanent pen-marks.
Countless have erected a formidable metal barrier surrounding the heartbeat, the vulnerable.
Some feel as though everyone can see right through the glass of our exterior.

Yet despite the extreme discrepancies, we are all boxes.
What matters is the content inside.

Because without the treasure, every box is worthless really.
We all have an empty void that we need the God-treasure to fill.

The question is,

Does the God-treasure inhabit your box?

Beautiful Ugly

I love all things beautiful.
And it's a beautiful life I live. Every part of it.

Oh, I may cry. I may wonder.
I may wish things were different.
I may at times wish to see beyond the misty shroud upon my pathway.

Yet my God is also a lover of the beautiful. 
And making my life beautiful is exactly what He is attempting to do. Even through the ugly.
Because sometimes it is the ugly that makes something beautiful. 

Sometimes it's the only thing…

The beautiful-ugly.
If anything falls under the category of miracle, that does.

A miracle of Love poured out upon an ugly planet bathed in ugly scars.
A miracle that transforms ugly hearts.

A miracle that looks past ugly surfaces to discern uncut diamonds, hearts of beauty covered by years of filth.

He calls the ugly beautiful…
        He calls each beating heart beautiful…
                He calls me beautiful…

And He promises to love me forever and always. Not because I'm beautiful, but because I'm ugly. 
It's the ugly that makes the greatest contrast when transformation occurs anyway.

He calls my ugly beautiful.
My love overflows.

Broken Pieces {Beautiful Vessel - Part II}

{Jeremiah 19}

Shards. Shattered fragments. Broken pieces.

The Israelites had made a mess of themselves, no doubt about that. And God was ready to cast them onto the ground like a potter’s bottle to be broken beyond repair. 

It seems utterly heartless. 

How could a God of love execute such fearsome justice?

Yet I realize they were hardened. The material of their hearts was as brittle clay, unfit to be molded. 

He had no other choice.

But the beautiful thing is, although the shards of our sin are utterly shattered, He doesn’t reuse those pieces. He starts afresh with new material.

And the outcome is more beautiful than anything our finite minds could even desire. Yet still He is not satisfied.

Yes, you’ll be used for hard labor and go through harrowing experiences, but He has a special place on His glass shelf embedded with amathysts and diamonds just for you…

And He cannot be truly satisfied until you are there—His beautiful vessel.

The Potter's Hands {Beautiful Vessel - Part I}

{Jeremiah 18}

Hands caked with evidences of pottery sculpting. Clay lining all the creases. 

Gentle fingers guiding a softened adobe-colored lump. 

His brow slightly furrowed in concentration. Eyes intent on the subject of expertise. 

Deft hands working for the perfect outcome.

A sigh escapes pursed lips. Defect detected. 

Doubtless it wasn’t the Potter’s fault. He is the Master.

No… the clay itself is flawed. Its original composition is altered. 

Carefully the Potter removes the deformed lump from the wheel and with His hands remedies the formula and places the reshaped clay again upon the wheel. Silence induced by concentration again ensues.

Finally, after hours of perfecting, a beautiful vessel begins to take shape. Perfect in symmetry, exquisite in appearance, practical in service and sturdy in character, this vessel is no ordinary work of art. Into each creation He pours equal effort, nevertheless they are all unique, individual and stunning in composition.

I may attempt to make myself beautiful, yet without the correct formula, I can never succeed. 

Only when I am pliable in the Potter’s hands, can any true beauty emerge.

And who would desire to be in another’s hands? His are the gentlest earth has ever known.

They are the Potter’s hands…

Learning to Love…

I have a keen dislike for filth, disease and chaos. And most everyone else I know feels the same. Yet recently I have been impelled to reexamine my attitude toward these very things.

This world is steeped in the results of sin. There is no doubt about that. Everywhere I turn I see hurting exemplifications of humanity. And what I see doesn’t even scratch the surface…

It pains my heart.

Kirsten Dysinger

I wonder why…
Why was I allowed the privilege of a happy, normal home while the majority of the world exist with dysfunctional homes, destructive addictions, unfathomable poverty, gruesome wars, mistreatment, persecution, and other things I shudder to mention?

Glesni Mason

Then I pause and reconsider my own life… and I realize that I am just as impoverished and despicable as the most degraded of today’s society. Maybe more…

How can God love such an utterly miserable, disfigured person as myself? What motivated Him to risk all, to relinquish incomprehensible glory and power so that he might stoop to my debased level and save me? How could He discern the potential for beauty beneath my grime and wretchedness? 

Yet if He sees beauty in my ugliness, shouldn’t I learn to see beauty in ugliness too? I’m not talking about cherishing the condition. I mean seeing the capacity for beauty beneath the condition, unconditionally loving despite any unsightly externals.

Hasn’t He entrusted me with the responsibility to love the unlovable, the disfigured, the calloused, the abnormal, the dirty, the uncouth? Haven’t I been instructed to view every individual through the eyes of God, as a precious treasure?

Glesni Mason

Glesni Mason 

Oh, let me love as Christ loves.
Open my eyes to see the treasure beneath layers of filth, deformity, guilt and pain…

And let me remember that every life matters…

Glesni Mason

Glesni Mason

Glesni Mason

How can you not love these faces?