How you see things makes all the difference in the world. Everyday everyone immediately around you beholds the same sunrise, the same drippy sky,  the same murky gray expanse, or alternately the same day dripping sunshine, the same headlines in world events, the same grocery aisles and food options; we share so much. We all smell the familiar aromas of a fall breeze, the local coffee shop, and all those restaurant smells mingling together creating tummy rumblings in each of us(smile). We also share many things unfamiliar, some in seasons of perpetual night it seems, others basking in sunny days and experiences that are all aligning delightfully. But at the bottom of it all, at the core, we all go through the same things but with vastly different outcomes.

We experience loss and death, joy and laughter, tears and pain, smiles and bliss, smiles and longing. The human experience is one shut in a broken and bleeding world aching soul deep for a Savior. It’s those of us who have found Jesus who have this opportunity to see everything without and within us differently. Light only breaks through where radical faith exists. When true Light breaks in, our hearts break open in repentance, in the pure joy of seeing Him. And when our hearts break open the world reveals its hidden splendor. Behind all the darkness, behind the masks of evil beams a brilliant salvation that is coming. Jesus, always coming and He changes how we see everything right now. Eyes once blind now see. It’s true you know.

So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord–who is the Spirit–makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

2 Corinthians 3:18

It’s the way you see things that helps you see the beauty in everything or makes you see everything as a vast expanse of unbeautiful.  Beauty in a loss is that it was. Beauty in a sunrise is that none of them ever look the same.  Beauty in a death is that they lived. Beauty in dusk is the way the light changes swiftly as it dances down the sky.  Beauty in a job is that it’s a gift from God. Beauty in a child is that they are a reward from a good Father. Beauty in full bookcase is that you can read (even if it’s not perfectly organized to your exact liking at this exact moment, silly smile). There is exquisite beauty everywhere. In walking through rows of trees three to five times your age, in helping children cross the street. In holding hands with your husband. Too many of us miss it everyday. We’re so tired. We’re so without the light of His Word and the help of us His presence we become blind to beauty. Blind to that which helps us to live for that which is unseen. If we cannot give thanks, we cannot see His gifts.

If we cannot delight in the smallest of things, the bigness of God will be lost on us.

Sometimes God parts a sea and sometimes He comes quietly to the womb of a virgin. Sometimes He crumbles down the walls of a city for His people, and all the time His Spirit comforts and helps us. But how many of us perceive Him? Sometimes God blinds a man to show Him Christ, and sometimes those who know Christ live as though blind. We do not have to live that way though. The breathing Words breathe fresh life, give vision to eyes aching with the sadness of this world. Let us see the beauty of God though it be blurred  by our tears at times, let us keep on seeing life as it really is. Truest gift, and there is beauty everywhere. Look for it.