2 Corinthians 3:4-11
Far from my vacation outpost looking over the Atlantic, I have returned to my perch here overlooking another body of water, so beautiful and serene. To what do we owe such beauty? Did the storms of last evening justify and create the beauty of today? What causes this beauty? I suppose that first you must actually take time to look and actually see the beauty or decide to see the beauty. I am sure there are those that look past almost everything and see a gloomy new day, a day filled with chores or perhaps suffering of one kind or another. I am not here to judge or force people to see the joy that is in their lives.
But what causes such beauty and how am I filled with such confidence of it? How does anyone see such beauty around them or more importantly, in themselves?
The confidence is not born of any action that I have taken. In spite of my humming the song from The Sound of Music, "Something Good", where 'I must have done something good', I have done nothing. Like the passage today proclaims, I have done nothing that I can boast of. I have done nothing that I could not have done without the grace of God. If it were not for the saving graces of Jesus, dying on the cross for me, I could accomplish nothing of note and I would not be able to see the glory and love that God has proclaimed and freely given. Perhaps that's it, freely given.
Until I can acknowledge the beauty inside me and the uniqueness of God's creation in me, I cannot move forward in any meaningful way. Not for myself and not for loving anyone else. In this way, my life and all it's actions, all it's thankfulness and vision, become an expression of God's love. This is simply not something I deserve because of something I have done. Nothing I could accomplish now or forever could earn me such beauty, love or vision.
Once when you are willing to accept the innate beauty within you, created by God out of shear love, can you move forward and see the glory around you because it is coming from within you as created by God. It all stems from seeing the beauty inside.
We may falter and we may stumble but know that God's love and your uniqueness should give you confidence to move forward in that love.
Such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Now if the ministry of death, chiselled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!
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