On Stickers

There are two people in my life who are always passing on to me some precious treasure or two.  When they say, “I have something for you…” I smile wide in anticipation because I know it’s going to be good.  One happens to be my mother-in-law. She always arrives with bags filled with wonderful and extraordinarily random items that I love.  Tulip bulbs (already planted in soil inside beautiful pots (!), saran wrap, a coffee-grinder and an unusual vase that she assures I can give to Goodwill with no hard feelings. I rarely do because I love what she gives. If you ever see anything in my home that you think is lovely you can rest assured it comes from her hand.  She has an eye for ordinary beauty and redemptive decorating. Taking what another tosses and creating, truly, a treasure.  I love learning from her.

My other giving friend does much the same.  Her gifts have included hand-me-down-still-in-perfect-condition Uggs, sourdough starter, parenting books, Chia seeds, gorgeous patio planters (with flowers in them!), and an entire basket filled with assorted tea.  Tell me,what could be better?

So recently this friend opened up her purse during our 6am prayer meeting and announced to the other six of us, “I have stickers for you!”

Stickers?

My mind went straight to  the Thomas the Train ones that Dutch sticks all over his face.  Hmm… But she opened up a stationary box and pulled out a stack of small matte sheets of, yes, I suppose you’d call them stickers.

But they were beautiful. Vintage-inspired takes on flowers and birds. Matte, textured, think Anthropolgie.  To call them “stickers” seemed offensive. They were art!  I received them gladly and tucked them carefully in my Bible to await an occasion special enough to merit their use.

They soon found their use.

Prayer Cards & Scripture Memory Cards.

I’ll share more on Tuesday about my love for prayer cards and simple ways to make them work.  But what has struck me recently about them is this:

Beauty fosters discipline.

I am, as you maybe be able to tell, experiencing a shackle-shaking revolution in my little heart of once again learning to embrace beauty.  To love beauty. To value beauty as inherently valuable because all that is beauty points to He who is Beautiful.

Our God is Beautiful.

Perhaps it sounds overly dramatic, but it is a keen enough conviction in my heart that I even have felt led to repent of this–this departure from pursuing beauty.  I had, in the past dozen years, sterilized my life in order to squeeze as much productivity out of it.

I had raped the soil of my own soul in a selfish striving to produce some supposedly spiritual product.

Fruit?

Fruit doesn’t grow from barren soil.

Fruit, real fruit, only grows from soil that is rich. And could it be that seeking beauty–as a way of seeking the reflection of our Great and Glorious God–is one of the ways that we cultivate this ground, one of the ways that we add nutrients and then watch the fruit grown, ripen …

... that a world may taste and see that the Lord is good.

So I slid those precious stickers out of my Bible and got to work on my new prayer cards. I used a smoky blue color marker for the titles and sharp black ink for the names. Then, of course, I finished them off with the beautiful stickers. They are simple, but exquisite to me. And you know what I’m finding?

Their beauty fosters discipline. I find so much delight in how beautiful my prayer cards look, I take care of them and cherish them and love to pray over them. I pull them out each morning like little treasures to behold. I touch those textured stickers, thinking of my friend (who is beauty), of this new pursuit, of cultivating rich soil, of my Great and Glorious God.  My stickers are beautiful.

Just like prayer is beautiful.

My heart grieves for the years I have spent sterilizing my life so that I can produce more shriveled, dried up fruit that no one in their right mind would want to eat.  One bright red, ripe, delicious juicy strawberry from the garden is worth ten tasteless ones shipped from who knows where.  Perhaps our lives are a little like that. Less fruit, but better. Real. And maybe that has something to do with beauty.

Maybe it has something to do with stickers.

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Do you see Him in the details of life? He is so beautiful.

Where have you seen Him today?