Someone Cares (About Beauty)

A Home and Heart reader (thanks, Connie), gave me a card with this story she found, and I thought (as did she) that it was a lovely Home and Heart reflection:

"Some years ago, in a time of great brokenness and pain in my life, I was staying with friends in their comfortable home.  Every morning I woke up early, unable to sleep.  And every morning I would hear a light tap on my door, and open it to find a lovely tea tray: a tiny vase of flowers; a brightly colored napkin; a silver spoon and china cup; a pot of tea.  While the tea warmed  my body, the beauty of the tray helped to bring healing to my soul.

Now I have a theory about beauty.  I think it's one of the ways God brings healing to our hurting world.  In appreciating beautiful things, we experience healing for our brokenness, and by sharing or creating beauty, we can extend that healing to others who are hurting.

I live in a very beautiful place: Durango Colorado.  I'm grateful that I can look out my windows and see  mountains and evergreen trees, clear blue skies, and sometimes even deer and elk. But at times I've wondered why God bothered to make all this beauty -  it seems so unnecessary, so extravagant.

All of us aren't artists or architects, poets or composers, but, we can still participate in the creation of beauty. It doesn't take a lot of money, either: a few green sprigs in a glass of water; a word of hope and encouragement; an invitation for a leisurely walk in the park; a lighted candle on the dinner table; tulip bulbs planted in a window box; a plate of muffins hot out of the oven. In a multitude of ways, we can be channels of God's healing, putting a little more beauty into our world and into our lives."

by Mary Jane Clark