None Live For Themselves

I think more than anything we fear being found out.

We are scared; scared that people will find out who we really are, warts and all.

We find ourselves often wondering what others see in us and what they think of us.

Our myopic and self centered views on life have paralyzed us.

Why?

Because discovering ourselves over and over, whether in counseling sessions or too much time in isolation or even in self-centered prayer, has led to a deep and magnified view of our failures, flaws, and wounds.

I often find myself in constant preoccupation with these nagging thoughts.

True freedom lies in lending ourselves to others instead of to some sort of introspective paranoia.

My dear friend Sam Choi once told me that humility comes not in thinking less of ourselves, but in not thinking of ourselves at all.

We are reminded by the Apostle to "in humility, consider others better than ourselves", we are told to look "not only to our own interests, but also to the interests of others."

Verily we are told by Christ, that in the end, the man who strives to save his life will lose it, and the man who gives his life will find it.

O Beauty!

As Christians, we have called God by many names, not Buddha or Allah of course, but we have called him Father or Friend or Savior or King.

These, our own particular brand of God, are usually chosen based on some mixture of our own personal spiritual needs, and whatever we were taught about God in our formative years.

In recent musings I have wondered what would be different if we were to come to know God as the author of Beauty.

David, in wonder, cries aloud from the place of prayer, "From zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth."

In seemingly ecstatic utterance Augustine writes in his confessions, "O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new!"

Dear friends, what would it be like to know the one who is "perfect in beauty"?

I wonder if our creations would be more brilliant; I wonder if we would realize the true beauty that lies within us, the Imago Dei. Perhaps most importantly for me, I have wondered what presuppositions I have about God will be shattered in the wake of my newfound revelation of who God is.

But come what may, this is all that I have come to desire, "to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord."