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We are good.

Not due to anything inherent in ourselves,

but good because God proclaimed it over us.

Left to ourselves we are a mass of ugliness and evil.

Full of selfishness and pride, we wallow in our muck and call it good.

Yet while we were still ragged, filthy,

God spoke.

And we were good.

Words have power.

Especially God’s words.

God’s Word flows from His mouth to water the ground and grow the seed.

It will not return to Him void.

God spoke and it is so.

Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth century mystic, said that we must discover that “we are clothed in God’s goodness.”

We are lovely because God loves us.

Both sides of this matter.

It matters that our goodness comes from God.

Otherwise we might adore ourselves.

It matters that we are clothed in God’s goodness.

Otherwise we might despise ourselves.

When we submerge ourselves in the fullness of this truth for long enough,

God’s love spills over

and makes everything lovely.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining ’till He appeared and the soul felt its worth

The worth that was declared by God from the beginning.

He saw all that He had made and behold, it was very good.

We are good because God made us.

We are lovely because He loves us.

God delights in us.

We must steep ourselves in this.

Because once we believe this?

Believe it in the deepest places of ourselves?

We will naturally delight in all those around us.

And they will be more lovely for having tasted our God-delight.

We breathe in the spirit that delights in our being – the fragrance of it. And it works on us. Then we exhale (for that breath has to go somewhere) – to breathe into the world this same spirit of delight. ~ Gregory Boyle in Tattoos on the Heart

Art credits: final photograph by Kirk Sewell; all other photographs copyright Made Sacred 2019

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