The true power of beauty was never manufactured, it was always outflow. Before creation, before culture, before we ever learned to chase it, beauty already belonged to the love shared between Father, Son, and Spirit. Every fragment of true beauty we encounter is a glimpse of that love. If we, as Christ followers, are caught in a reactionary rejection of beauty's cultural counterfeits, asleep to its trinitarian birthplace, then we're likely blind to the way the spirit of prophecy moves creatively through the world.

His voice is thick sometimes, thick like molasses tumbling through my intestines like last night’s cauliflower. His voice is elusive sometimes, Floating somewhere here, in my chest, like the morning fog. The more I reach for it, the farther it gets. His voice flutters sometimes, like butterfly wings, dancing in my bones

The “us” in God with us is far wider than we have dared to believe. If I can be aware of His withness with me in my mess, then I must learn to be aware of His withness amongst whoever I’m tempted to “other.”

We come to the cross, then, not as strangers to suffering, but as people deeply wrestling with darkness. And perhaps that is exactly where Good Friday meets us. This is the strange mercy we find on this Good Friday. It does not offer us an escape from darkness. It offers us a God who has been in the darkness and knows the way through it.

With maturity, though, comes a deeper understanding. We start to recognize the world’s complexity and imperfections, yet we are able to hold our core convictions, even if we wobble at first. With maturity, we learn the ability to sit within the tensions, see many truths at once, feel many realities simultaneously, and trust in the stable root system that holds us in place.

Advent comes by night For He has chosen not thrones and crowns But the hearts of men as His prize Traded silken warmth for a cold cloth and trough And the foolish things to confound the Wise.

The cross and resurrection of Christ brought redemption, but that was the crescendo, the final blow. The reconciliation really began the moment Mary became pregnant. Just as Jesus did not become leprous when He touched the leper, He would not become contaminated by humanity. His glory would transform us, minute by minute, breath by breath, every moment He lived on this earth.

They are woven together into an eternal tapestry of what they know and what they cannot quite see. Speaking of One greater, whispering the welcome of the King of kings.

Why did You still have wounds anyway? Why was your body not whole? There You stood, risen in glory, And yet Your torn flesh remained.