Scaling Mountains

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” 2 Cor. 5:17

I am so blessed that I ordered the wrong item when searching for a Bible Study! Annie Downs’s book, Looking for Lovely goes much deeper in the details of her life than the Bible Study. The words that I am left with from my reading this morning are words that sound so heroic on paper…courage and bravery. But to be described by these words are not for the faint of heart.

A friend of mine came to mind this morning when considering these words who has been through so much in an 8-year period. I call her a heart friend because we have only spent limited time together twice but have texted through heartbreaking times throughout the past 6 years. I know she feels anything but brave but her face comes to my mind when I hear these words. Sometimes courage just means getting out of bed in the morning and putting one foot in front of the other. Annie Downs writes of the call to courage that God placed deep inside all of us. ‘We were never meant for a wimpy life…Just as God made you uniquely, your call to courage is unique as well…You are called to face whatever dragons come into your life and scale the mountains that show up in your view…And you must walk it bravely…So be brave, try the thing, trust that if you are pursuing God, and going after a brave life, He can fix and sweep up and help you’ p.44-45.

My heart friend used to always say that she didn’t feel brave when I would tell her how courageous she was. But that’s the thing about courage when pursuing God. We can be brave because our courage comes from Him. Just as we watch and wait for the sunrise to break through the darkness, we must watch and wait for the beauty that overflows from our bravery, and show up each and every day no matter our circumstances. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder…beauty is what YOU see, what sticks out to you, the unique moments God gives you to collect up and hold and draw strength from. I needed to find beauty if I was going to hang in there. I need it in my life. I need it in my heart. I need it in the bank of my soul to withdraw when things feel hard. So, I decided to start looking’ p. 50

Look around and find your unique beautiful moments. God is creating something new and we will arrive at our ‘future beautiful’ when we string together moments of our ‘daily beautiful.’