In my alone time with Jesus a few days ago, I asked Him if there was a song He wanted to sing to me today! The line came back immediately from a James Blunt song:
“You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful it’s true”.
Just that one line. No more.
It was precious to sit still (!) with Him and allow that truth to sink – slowly - into my being, without batting it away or just saying “Yeh sure Jesus, that’s good” and rushing on. He knew I needed to hear it three times over, not just once! For me to know, really know it is truth, not just nice words.
It will never cease to amaze me that the One who created the exquisiteness of sunsets and double peonies, of fractals and achingly haunting music, finds me beautiful. Me! And You! Yes, the wonder that is YOU!! And don’t you go squirming away from that truth, now!!! Let it sink in- s-l-o-w-l-y. You. Are. Beautiful. Hear it! 3 x over It’s His irreversible verdict about you!
Anyway, with my soul full of this extraordinary truth, I made my way towards the very ordinary streets of the city. It suddenly dawned on me that Father had people I would meet today who specially needed to hear that their Maker and Redeemer finds them beautiful. Has beautiful plans for their life. That truth was not just for me.
It was lunchtime and busy! Fine, sunny weather and the reopened shops had drawn a steady bustle of people to the high street. I needed a greetings card and what should be the very first card to catch my attention as I scanned the rack in the card shop? A cream card with a capital “B” on it in big, gold lettering saying
“B is for Be-you-tiful”!! Holy Spirit super-sleuth was giving me a big clue that my first “Beautiful” needed to be shared with the girl who served me at the till. I didn’t feel I should give her a card from her own shop (!) but I gave her another card from my blessing box with some words of scripture I felt were just for her. I told her about Father God wanting me to assure her that she is beautiful. Her face lit up with a smile. I sensed some other words about the joy she carries being magnetic to small children and her special role with little ones. She was really touched by this whole encounter and said it had made her day.
Later in the street, I saw a dear older lady in a sari walking with difficulty, using a stick. I stopped to say “Oh, that looks painful. Have you had an injury?” She explained in broken English that she had weakness all down one side due to a stroke many years ago. The issue had got worse in the last decade. I explained about praying for people through the name of Jesus and she allowed me to pray for her there and then. It was difficult to follow the progress due to language limitations, but I persisted as far as I could with the healing.
I also looked her full in the face and told her that her Heavenly Father sees her as very beautiful. “I’m 85” she said, as if beauty was no longer possible for her. “Yes, and Father calls you beautiful in every one of those years and still today!”.I replied. Smiling, she sat on a bench next to her husband who I was unaware had been waiting and watching the whole time.
He was very appreciative that I had shown kindness and compassion to his wife. I was able to speak about the day that Jesus came and put his Love in my heart and how He has never left. I encouraged them to call on Jesus to come and show Himself to them too. It felt time to stop talking and I blessed them and went on my way.
On another bench further up the street, a cluster of young adults were sitting together. Two guys and two girls. They were some of Father’s lost treasures who have seen the harsh end of life from the very start. I went up and asked if any of them had any pain in their body. Two of them said no, one cycled off but one of the young men asked if he could talk with me privately, away from the group. We went aside and he began to tell me some of his struggles. His pain was acute - emotional and mental and also clearly tied to addiction. I will call him Ryan. The back story of his life has more trauma and dysfunction than is possible to describe here. He had tried to take his own life on multiple occasions, in multiple ways. It is a repeated miracle that Ryan is still alive. Scars of self-harm cutting covered his body, even his face. This was a life full of ashes, loss, death, hopelessness. Yet the Father was here in the midst, seeing Ryan as His beautiful boy, stretching out His arms to him and calling him home.
When I asked Ryan what He would most want Jesus to do for him, he said he wanted peace in his mind and to be cleansed. He wanted me to pray for him but just then a “contact” cycled past and took Ryan’s attention away. Ryan went off, apologising to me that it was not for something he was proud of. Before he left, he asked me for my mobile number. He couldn’t pronounce my name, so calls me June! Promising he would come back, he went off with his friend.
As I waited, a smartly dressed senior gentleman sat down to rest, sighing with relief. “Heavy shopping?” I asked. “No, just age” he laughed. We fell into conversation, where I learned about his extraordinary life as a medical doctor who had come over to the UK in the 1950s as a young lad from near the Himalayas, eventually training at Oxford. . We spoke about things from philosophy to the solar system to the Bible to Covid. A more stark contrast there could not have been between this highly educated, wealthy older physician who had walked the halls of the medical, social and even royal elite and a young man whose life hovered between prison, drugs, the gutter and death. Yet they are both so beautiful to the Heavenly Father.
Ryan didn’t come back. But he contacted me later that night and we spoke again about Jesus and how God is continually pursuing him, not allowing him to die because he has made Ryan for life, not death. For thriving, not barely surviving. For a beautiful life. I also persuaded him to get in touch with someone I know who loves Jesus and whose job is helping young men like Ryan in that city. How I pray that he will follow that up. Will you join me in praying this young man falls into the arms of His heavenly Father, never having known the embrace of a loving earthly Dad?
The ashes of life cannot overcome the beauty of Jesus and His saving love. No life is too ugly to be redeemed by His beauty. No situation s so hopeless that His hope cannot restore it to something new and beautiful.
Oh Praise Him, this wonderful King of Love who brings beauty from ashes. (Isaiah 61 v 3)