Snow falls gently again today after a weekend that brought a foot of snow. I look out the windows past my Christmas twinkle lights and the silver star that tops the tree, seeing and seeking a world made new. What a wonderful God we have–a God who brings beauty from ashes and makes all things new. I think of the many situations in my life that have seemed hopeless, yet through it all, God made a way.

John Muir said that we live in a world made, yet being made. Our awesome God is Creator and Sustainer of the earth. Yet in His great wisdom and affection for us, He has allowed us to play a role.Paradoxically, we all carry both beauty and brokenness within us. We live in a fallen world, yet we bear the image of a perfect God. Endless choices of what we will reflect are before us. In God’s Kingdom, we can choose to allow Him to redeem us, our surroundings, and our circumstances. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Though we travel the world to find the beautiful, we must carry it within us, or we find it not.”

An encounter with creation is always an encounter with its Creator. In God’s mysterious glory, He meets us there and allows us to come to His feet in whatever condition we are in. He has made us, yet we are being made. Whatever our journey, He is our Emmanuel, God present with us. And as the apostle Paul declared in Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” 

In The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, author Annie Dillard sought to observe and experience the marvels and mysteries of nature. She wrote, “I am prying into secrets again and taking my chances. I might see anything happen. I might see nothing but light on the water. I walk home exhilarated and becalmed, but always changed, alive. ‘It scatters and gathers, Heraclitus said, ‘It comes and goes.’ And I want to be in the way of its passage and cooled by its invisible breath.”

We may feel we have nothing of significance to offer the world, but God says differently by choosing to create and sustain our lives. Nelson Mandela used the following quote from author Marianne Williamson in his inauguration speech, 

“It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

In this season that holds the darkest days of the year, yet one in which we celebrate the coming of the light of Christ the Messiah, may we each choose beauty…to let our own lights shine in the places we inhabit.