Sunday 19 October 2014

You're Beautiful

"I see your face in every sunrise
The colours of the morning are inside your eyes
The world awakes in the light of the day
I look up to the sky and say
You're beautiful"

Singing these words over in church this morning, I wondered if I really knew what they meant. Struck by just how difficult it was for my tiny mind to comprehend just how beautiful He is. How I just had no idea.  And then words from years ago echoed in my head. A wise and wonderful preacher I once knew who said "If you don't think you love God enough, then really, you don't know how much God loves you".

And then flashback. It's the early hours of the morning. I'm standing at the operating table in bright theatre lights. It's been a long night. This woman is one of many I've got to know over the last nine hours or so. We've been in and out of her room on labour ward all night. Things have moved slowly, there have been concerns about the baby, and we've ended up here, doing a C-section. Her partner has been with her all the while. He sits by her head, just behind the screen, but I can just see him in my peripheral vision. Silent, grey-faced, worried-looking. Concerned at her pain, perhaps more concerned about what will happen to her ultimately, what will happen to their baby. He hasn't been the type to ask a lot of questions. He looks more worried now, uncomfortable in theatre scrubs. I doubt he finds any reassurance from us, unrecognisable scrubbed for theatre, masked and gowned. He waits.

I do my job and think nothing of it. As I step back from the table at the end of the operation, he has just been passed his baby.

His face is changed. The colour has come back. The lines of worry are smoothed, lifted to lines of joy. I barely recognise him. The happiness as he looks down at his newest child. The beeping machines of theatre, the bright lights, all of this has faded away. This is not his first baby, but in that moment, he can see no other person. No other being can compare to the beauty he sees before him. And his face says all that.



That's when it strikes me that this is how God sees each one of us.
"Look at you, my child. You are so beautiful."
And his fatherly face filled with love and kindness.

We can focus on our worries, our uncertainty... Even our uncertainty about whether we love God enough, or whether we understand His true beauty. Or we can turn away, turn into his face and listen to him tell us, "You're beautiful".


1 comment:

  1. Ahh that is a beautiful example of His love for us, thanks Mich x

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