Day 1: What does beauty mean to you?

The dictionary describes BEAUTY as the following:

1. A combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, esp. the sight.
2. A combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense.

Beauty is different to everyone.  You can see it in the simplest things and actions.  Sometimes it is a great show of breath-taking proportions.  Whether or not the dictionary definition is accurate or not, does not really matter to me.  After all, how would you define beauty?  What words could you possibly choose to convey such. . . . . splendor? I will, however, do my absolute best to give you an inkling into my thoughts on BEAUTY, and what she is.

There are some things beautiful to me, that the world would probably find quite the opposite. For example, the birth of a child. When you look at it from the doctors stand point, its just a bunch of blood and fluid. Yuck! But how beautiful to behold the first meeting between a baby boy or girl and a mother that has been anxiously awaiting their arrival . No one knows the details of this journey.  It may have been a struggle beyond what we could even imagine. But that doesn't matter anymore. The wait is over.  That is beautiful to me.

It's always a beautiful thing to witness a person repenting and then asking Christ to come into their heart.  But for me, to see an old man walk that isle. . . . . . .Imagine with me. . . . .It takes him a while because he can't walk very well anymore. But step by step he makes that long way toward the preacher.  A look of anguish is upon his brown, wrinkly face.  He puts one foot in front of the other, which seems to take much effort.  With a shaky, leathery hand, he reaches out for that preachers out-stretched arm and he grabs ahold.  You can almost hear his alligator tears fall to the floor with a splash as he tells his story to the pastor. Then with a grin he turns around and wipes his tears away with the sleeve of his faded flannel shirt, and the pastor announces "This man has just been SAVED"! . . . . . . . . .That. . . . is BEAUTIFUL to me! 

I sincerely believe that there is beauty in everything, if you simply look.  A sunrise and a sunset, the birth of a child or the death of a child of God, a drenching summer rain or the first snow of winter, the relationship between a small child and their dog, the growth of a flower, the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly, falling in love, making someone smile, music, the music of our hearts, making a new friend, finding an old friend, helping a stranger, singing, laughter, tears, . . .Need I go on?

On the other side of that, there are some sad things that are absolutely beautiful.  I know for a fact that sometimes God allows bad things to happen to us' so that better things can come along.  If we only knew how beautiful that was.