Day 15: Velveteen

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Escapism is near and dear to me. Music, museums, symphony halls, movies, novels, nature...maybe it's the longing to find my real self "out there," or maybe it's just that this very real life is simply too much to bear sometimes. But time and time again, Christ meets me in all my escapisms. He knew that this world is too much. Because what He did "out there and back then," he also does right here and right now. As I strain to find the meaning of it all, His love seeps through all my fading beauty, graciously intruding on my reality. 
Some things in this world really are too beautiful to behold. I heard once that the average person only spends about 5 to 10 minutes when they see the Grand Canyon. Who could wonder and gaze at such beauty for longer than that?

"So if my beauty starts to fade
Well, I've been held in a thousand ways
If my heart looks broken in
Then I've been brave enough to live
If perfect turns to perfect mess
And all your love is all that's left
Then I'm as real as real can be "

(Christa Wells - "Velveteen") 

 "You love me. Real or not real?"
I tell him, "Real."
{Hunger Games/Mockingjay)

"Is it fair to say that Country is more real than ours? That its stone is harder, its water more drenching--that the weather itself is alert and not just background? Can you endure a witness to its tactile presence?" 
(Peace Like a River by Leif Enger)

"Now we see but in a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love." 
(1 Corinthians 13:12-13)




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