Psalm 29: 2 Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.**
Just days before I stumbled on this verse (sweaty hands paging through my bible while my feet made mileage on the treadmill), I asked You to show me what beauty was.
I’ve learned, am learning, what it’s not. The enemy whispers to my reflection that it’s five less pounds. The storefront window tells me it’s something I can purchase to hide behind. I’ve known beauty as external, while You make a different case in my insides.
I’ve made holy, rigid … but You say holy is beauty. And I want it. I want beauty springing up from within me. Oh, I praise You for holiness – my constitution has craved it unknowingly my whole life.
I praise You for the holiness that happens when I look up.
I praise You for how pressing in to something, which becomes almost easy when I get a taste of it – the beauty of sitting in Your presence, with a stance of adoration – produces the purity I was made to live.
You make me holy. And all I do is adore You. I enjoy and You transform.
And my definition of beauty gets re-worked. I can hunger holiness without it looming over me as a goal I will never attain. Holy is You and You offer me all of You and it’s beautiful.
Thank you for beauty in my morning, promising hope when I feel fear. Your beauty interrupts my mundanity and says: “you can taste holy, even now. Holy can start here.” while I scrub pots and train little fingers to write their letters. Your beauty is a banner over my marriage and my motherhood, while still being in the details of my every-heart movement.
Holiness isn’t shaming, as I’ve so often seen it. Holiness is You, all over me. And You are beauty.
Your presence is the beauty I’ve been craving and seeking to satisfy in all the wrong places. And when I sit in Your beauty, I become like You. Holy.
I adore You, God, who re-writes my story and offers new definitions to my old assumptions.
I worship You in the beauty of holiness.
**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore to give you a context for this little space on my blog. (This post also gives context.)
If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration.
Then practice praise.
Add to my adoration here, by posting a comment with your own words back to God about God …or hide it in your heart.
I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.
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Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai
