Life is Beautiful?

“Oh Life, how beautiful you are.” These words are taken from a song that I grew to love last year, by Allison Sattinger (look her up on myspace, I really enjoy her music). In some ways, I completely agree with this statement. In others, I don’t. Life is beautiful. It is a gift, a present, and a daily reminder that in comparison to God, we are nothing. In a movie entitled, La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful), a family is torn apart by the Holocaust. They are put in concentration camps, and the father is trying his hardest to make his little boy believe that it is a game. He hides his son in the depths of the bunks, telling him that he’s playing hide and seek with the soldiers, and to never let them find him. It’s a beautiful story about life and compassion and love. But their life was not beautiful. It was full of pain, hurt, and dreadful murders at the hand of one hateful man. So what really makes life beautiful?  Or is this life on earth, full of so many disasters, both physical and emotional, truly beautiful? What is it that defines beauty? The world would tell you that beauty is only possible if you are willing to alter your whole image to become something else. God would tell you that you are “beautifully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14); that you are precious to him because you are His child. “The Father has loved us so much that we are called children of God. And we really are his children!” (1 John 3:1). Personally, I’m leaning towards life is not beautiful. Well, at least not this life on earth. I’m not very close to home, so I haven’t heard a lot of the news lately, but I have heard that there is pain out there. There are lives that are taken by others because they simply felt like it. There are children on the streets stealing just to get buy. There are teenage girls selling their bodies just so that they can get a little money, or feel a connection in a desperate way. There are tsunamis and hurricanes and earthquakes snatching the lives of our loved ones without warning. Is life truly beautiful? I choose to believe that life someday soon will be beautiful. When Jesus comes and sweeps us off our feet to a place so great we can’t even imagine it, even with Revelation spelling it out for us word by word. I guess my mission here is to convince you, and the world, that life is not beautiful. Not beautiful enough to want to stay here. Which in turn means, that we need to tell everyone we know that life will be beautiful, if they choose to accept that life. Eternal life. That’s sounding pretty sweet right now. “Jesus, the One who says these things are true says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen Come Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20) Let’s try to reach the world, one person at a time, one child at a time. Jesus is coming soon. Let’s get on it!