Though souls travel the world to find the beautiful, only the wise pay attention to Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes. Every season brings both joy and sorrows. Only a pure, true, and searching heart discovers what is true, pure, and good in all things.  Trials produce our character. We have Christ within us, so then we seek and find Christ-like things everywhere and gather them into our own lives. Some souls choose to feel wrecked by defeat and failure.  Take hold of the promises of God and be assured in spirit that it is never too late to build a beautiful character

Even a tiny bird will teach us a lesson if we are paying attention.  Birds do not fret after a storm rips their nest apart. So when our best plans get shattered, let us not weep in despair, but rise and build again. No one can undo a tragedy. No soul can repair the ruins of years of what the locust destroyed. BUT GOD CAN! We must look ahead and cling to the HOPE within us. HE who is greater than all that the world boasts about dwells withon us.  Let us lay all our burdens at our Father’s feet, and like a little child caught with it’s finger in the cookie jar, may we rest on His chest as He banishes all our teary regrets. Oh, to go back across the years long vanished, to have the ugly words unsaid, the selfish deeds undone, the errors cancelled, the deep shadows erased forever, in the glad sense of a fresh start. To be a little child whose story has just begun again. Oh Lord, help us rediscover our purpose in You. May the shadow of Your cross banish all other shadows that surround us. Father, shine a light on our souls and make us buoyant with a word of hope.  Let us run our best race and not be weary. Enable us to carry the blessing of Your truth by our testimony of Your faithfulness.

Poets and other writers tell us that our truest friend is the one who does not hesitate to hold a mirror to our face. Nevertheless, we do not like it.  There are undoubtedly faults within us that we ourselves do not see. Our eyes are set in our heads to look outward, not inward. Therefore, it is easier for us to detect flaws in others than in ourselves. This means that most of us have imperfections of which we are entirely unaware. We all have many unknown, hidden things within, both good and bad, that others cannot see. We cannot reveal ourselves perfectly even to our closest companions.

Without any intention to hide anything and with a desire to live a completely open life, many things remain in the deepest parts of our soul that we are blind to.  With honesty, we only admit to ourselves any selfish motive. Our friends may praise our good deeds, as we know that our best intention was blurred by a self-seeking purpose. On the flip side, some criticize a wrong spirit in our doing when we know in our heart that it was true love that prompted the act. We are both better and worse than others think us to be. The best aspects of a humble life does not flash their beauty before human eyes. None of us can ever show to others all that begs for purifying improvement within us. Just as there are countless stars in the depths of the sky that no human eye ever sees, much of our inner struggle remains unseen. Human lives are deeper than the heavens where the stars are set.

Even in the depths of the most ordinary soul, there are more hidden splendors than visible ones. Who among us fully expresses the truth they try to convey when speaking about or for their master? What singer ever captures all the music in their soul within a song?What painter ever transfers all the beauty of their vision to a canvas? What Christian ever lives out all the loyalty to Christ, all the purity and holiness, all the gentleness and sweetness, all the unselfishness and helpfulness, all the grace and beauty they long to show in their life, even in those who fail and fall in defeat, whose lives seem to consist of little but shame and sin, there are still glimmers of beauty.

We do not know what struggles, what acts of repentance, what efforts to improve, what sorrowful tears, or what deep longings for God and heaven exist in the heart of even the most depraved person. A person in whom the world and even their closest friends see nothing beautiful Undoubtedly every life contains goodness that human eyes cannot see However there is also evil that our friends cannot detect things no one suspects, but of which we ourselves are painfully aware. All of us are semi conscious of miserable things hidden within us.  Habititual doubts,  the activity of unholy thoughts and feelings, ugly passions and tempers, and the stirrings of pride, vanity, self-conceit, envy, jealousy, of which are not visible to anyone else.

Our Father does not leave us as He found us. His Spirit reveals hidden doubts. He  whispers in a soft voice to repent of a pride that dims our glow.  No matter how good or how bad we think we are, no honest soul ever journals all of what we truly think, what we do, what we felt. Why? There are selfish motives, shaming faults, unlovely things, and sins in our hearts of which we ourselves cannot bare. But there is an eye that pierces deeper than our own into our souls. Jesus is our final Judge so upon our own heart inspection, we confess what we know, but God knows all our motives. We all thus harbor sins of ignorance. Only God sees us through and through. We live daily in anticipation of His inspection and approval. We cannot see our own faults even as our neighbors see them. The Pharisee in his prayer, spoke much of other people’s sins but saw none in himself.