Thankful Thursday * Masterpiece...

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This morning the coffee was out and I needed to grind some to have a cup.
I looked up to see the beauty of the tea pot...
I delight in beauty.
It is my comfort.

A long over due pot of tea was prepared
The tea cozy pulled into use.
Just for me...a china cup and saucer.

We are his workman created for good works in Him.

How do you comfort your soul in times of trial?
What is it you do for your self when stress is high and fear or anxiety rush you?
When shame loneliness sorrow press you how do you still your heart and manage your emote?

Breath deeply.

I was asked recently...
"How do you comfort your self?"

I have thought on this for some time...days.
I tend to comfort in self sabotaging ways...a false comfort.
Really just invoking more pain to dull the other...we all do this I think in different ways. Perhaps even questioning if we really even deserve to be comforted if it is so easily and readily set before us to hurt.

Today...
The air a little cooler out in the yard tasks called for beauty.



The porch cleared as the BBQ grill sad and broken needed beauty.
New knobs were called for and my hand even wounded as I repaired the sharp edges of the broken handle bled.


No reason really but for beauty sake did I scrub the grill.
Yes , an odd thing to do for I have no coals to light a fire for a meal.
Yet it being on the patio called to me...Ugliness... fill me with beauty.

Apparent as the the wound on my hand...
stung!
Reality is ...beauty is the master comforter.
It is my comforter...
To create beauty.


I found myself feeling so well nurtured as I attempted to fashion this little corner of my yard.
You see this is a picture of "MORE WORK TO DO!"
to my husband. I know when done to him it will become a thing of admiration.
Once I was so very thrilled to do so tending to tidy home and decor.
Yes I still do a bit not like once when it was a treasured pursuit.

Over the years I neglected using beauty to comfort me.
Both my own beauty and the beauty of the masterpiece of my hands at any given moment seem to become wasted efforts supper fluent waste of time.
An annoyance and expense or just not really favored as in just different taste.
You know I made so many beautiful things a couple of years ago.
I was just thriving and here they sit...
The comfort for me is in the creating...if I were a good sells man and found comfort in it I am told a fortune is before me given my skills.
I did a few sells and find I really enjoy seeing the delight in the eyes of others who find pleasure in them. If folk talk me down my price and all I just would rather walk away. It is a sorta disregard somehow for the pleasure I hold in the item gets lost.



I believed a lie that my created beauty did not have a big difference really.
It seemed it had become an annoyance of chore, or even an ineffectual pursuit for every time I had created some nice little corner it would be dismantled by careless junk tossed here or there.
Messes made moments after the tidy...you know PARENTING :)
Or a room done only to have a change requested when the next new thing came along.
So alas I just tossed up my hand and gave up.
My comfort did not matter so much to others so it must not really matter...
I did not see that IT IS creating the beauty that comforts me.

This day while walking past the mirror where my little self table is...I looked up!
I looked up...
raised my eyes to her
who had stopped finding comfort in creating her own beauty.
I think that there is a lot of comfort to be offered to this reflection who longs for the loving beauty she withhold from her own soul.
I was struck with the realization what was once a pleasure to become beauty was now a worthless pursuit
Lie! YOU SAY?

Wounds are based in lies.

Masterpieces are always pure for they are the divine expression of truth.
Even in Art.
The most hideous of image when truth based is a Masterpiece.

Later this day a dear friend who is one of heart with me returned a call.
Our talk was a divine appointment.
Once was a day when the very thing that she uses to comfort herself was the foundation of our friendship.
Her and I suffer a similar fate in that this comfort we find when practiced often makes everyone else around us most uncomfortable.
She stopped being able to comfort her soul, even in church! the very place where all is suppose to be ripe. In our homes we too have lost a part of comfort.
Our comfort is this...The Word of God.
In her home she a gifted teacher is not welcome to share her knowledge for it hinders the pleasures of the flesh of the members so even in church she stands a silent teacher broken hearted as error is flushed like refuge across a room and folk just wallow in the false comfort of it.

In my home once it too was a Master of the Word.
In that the study of it was as honey and buttered bread to a starving man.
Studying the word however is a dangerous thing...
IN THIS

I am literalistic and if it says this...that is what it means...
not suggestions, guidance for our own well being.
Being literalistic is a real annoying thing to be in this world and can often become prudish in the eyes of others. At times accurately so.

Consider the cost?
Well I considered the cost at one point and became a silent doer...
I sometimes feel so very alone but today my girlfriend was unalone with me.
The world has swallowed her up and I too to some degree...

Oh but the masterpiece of all of this...
The call to comfort oneself...this question...this provoking question offered to me woke back up that memory of comfort and posted once again that query to count the cost. I know that many things learned in my study lacked the balance of a sage.
A lack of balance however is in no way a reason to remove the very comfort that will be my life blood.

The manual now dusty in my mind asks me if it might comfort me once again...
If I were to be comforted at the cost of an others discomfort what then?
Balance I guess the best attempt to draw comfort without removing the ease and comfort of another is balance.

The Scriptures post the greatest beauty in all of the written language.
It is corner stone to all I am.
I have been comforted with a memory one that fades with time, as does it's comforts.

Beauty it comforts me.
I am grateful to understand that.
For I need comfort every hour.
It is in the beauty of the friendship I have with God that all comfort comes a truth yes.
He is that Masterpiece within me that is the core of the passion I find in comforting myself with the surrounding beauty of all that this world , my hands and most importantly THE WORD has to offer me. His Holy Spirit through His Presence is my crystalline delight pure utter beauty.

How do you comfort yourself?
If we do not have appropriate ways to offer our souls, or others for that matter, comfort we will comfort with a false comfort that will only bring self sabotage.