FINDING BEAUTY IN EACH SEASON
I share more than my first name with her. Her love for beauty equaled mine. To her, beauty was not optional. It was a necessity.
Her story always inspired me. She had been sick and bedridden. She had a house full of hidden Jews during the oppression of the Nazi regime - and yet she got up, found time for that which others would call dispensable but to her represented the “most essential things in life.”
She picked flowers. She prepared food and a home on a very small budget. She organized music nights and thrived in the arts until the day when the Gestapo came and arrested her family.
One day her sister who had been put in solitary confinement was given a chance to walk past the door of her cell in the concentration camp:
Unbelievably, against all logic, this cell was charming. My eyes seized only a few details as I inched reluctantly past. The straw pallets were rolled instead of piled in a heap, standing like little pillars along the walls, each with a lady’s hat atop it. A headscarf had somehow been hung along the wall. . . . Even the coats hanging on their hooks were part of the welcome of that room, each sleeve draped over the shoulder of the coat next to it like a row of dancing children . . . It had been a glimpse only, two seconds at the most, but I walked through the corridors of Scheveningen with Betsie’s singing spirit at my side.
She had cultivated a lifestyle of generosity and found a way to express it even in the darkest time of her life and during a terrible time in history. Betsie Ten Boom did not survive the prison camp. She joined that great cloud of witnesses that encourages us to run the race of faith that is set before us.
Currently, for me, this means laying the table each meal as if it was for a feast while my mom suffering from dementia cannot fully appreciate it. It means bringing home flowers every time I pick up groceries because it brings her such joy. It means baking showstopper cakes for just the three of us at the table that no one else will ever see or appreciate. Love always spills more than necessary (John 12:3).
Hebrews 12 calls us to run the race with endurance. Endurance does not come easily for any of us. It is a muscle that needs to be warmed up, trained and stretched over and over again. It is interesting that we run this race looking unto Jesus - but not only. We are also gaining courage by looking to those who have gone before us.
In times like these it is the faith of Abraham and Sarah hoping against hope until the giggles of a little baby in the arms of a grey-haired mother filled the starry skies of Canaan; it is Jacob’s wrestle in the long night; it is Moses’ choices as a young man and the prayers of Elijah when there was not even a trace of a cloud on the sky; it is the unheard songs of David on the hills; the endurance of Joseph in prison, the decade of Hannah’s tears that birthed Samuel and it is Betsie Ten Boom loving well in prison that encourages us to run our race in this life. God knows we need these human examples. We are strengthened to endure not only by looking unto Jesus but also by the testimony of those who have gone before (cf. James 5:7-11, 16-18).
Corona will pass. Greater tribulations might come. At certain times, our life can feel like it has spun out of control. But we can choose to use the challenge of this season and strengthen our muscles of endurance by finding beauty in the midst of great uncertainty and loss. It will not be wasted. Love spilled never is. It may look like it momentarily but it will eternally be remembered by the One who went before us.
This gives me great hope. It makes every moment of our mundane responsibilities significant. It prepares us for greater troubles ahead and is working for us an eternal weight of glory.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Hebrews 12:1-2
