"It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian."

- Thomas Brooks

Part of Something Beautiful

The Castle of Alcalá de Guadaira by David Roberts

"let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." - 1 Peter 3:4

The beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit is dreadfully underrated. It doesn't look like much. Humanity's eyes are so dazzled and their ears so dulled by the flash and noise of loud-spirited women, that they can hardly see the pure beauty of harmony. Momentary sensations seem more attractive than the enduring wonder of a life increasingly submitted to God. Striking every key on a piano, or pouring all the paints in the box onto a canvas might attract people's attention with noise and color, but it is not beauty, because it has no harmony. A beautiful and lasting piece of art comes from careful attention to order and design.

A woman living in cheerful acquiescence to the Creator's design is beautiful because she has been brought into a place of harmony. Living as God designed her to live, she stands where she was meant to be. Like one true note in a great symphony, or one true stroke in a great painting, she is beautiful because she has become a willing part of a greater beauty. By so doing, she becomes both less (because she has given up herself) and more (because she is part of something greater). Those who know and love that something greater can see the true beauty of her life, and the greater thing to which it points - the redemptive purpose of an all-wise God. She may be disdained by those who cannot see that something greater. Those who cannot see are often the majority, and those who love the Creator are all too few. But only for now...

"Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints."

- Revelation 19:6-8, ESV

"A smiling welcome"

"The Lord be praised for all His tender mercies and loving-kindnesses - unceasing and unwearying as His love. My continual shortcomings, and oftcoming for forgiveness again and again, does not exhaust Him. I should have wearied out the whole host of heaven before this ; but Jesus is never wearied with hearing the cries of His poor tried and tempted saints. Always are they welcome, and I think the oftener I go the more welcome I am. Not a frown upon that countenance towards one who really feels his need of Him. A smiling welcome, fraught with mighty blessings, which, while it gladdens the heart, fills the soul with a humbling sense of its own vileness, - humbled in self, exalted in Christ."
- Mary Winslow