Its Raining Again, Expect a Rainbow! Day 3 of week 7

It is a rainy morning and I am having, of all things, a garage sale.  I planned one for last weekend, but it rained then also and the temperature was very chilly.  At least today is a warm one.  I could complain, I guess, but as I sit in my garage looking out I see the most wonderful sight.  The trees across the field have a fog within them that is on the move.  I suppose it is a cloud of rain, but it reminds me of the Smoky Mountains.  We are surrounded by fields and a little mouse disturbed from his nest is now running back and forth along the wall of the garage looking for a place to call home.  The birds seem to love the rain as they are playing in the puddles and chirping their songs of joy.  One little bird is now finding a place of refuge underneath my car as the rain picks up speed.

We complain about such little things, yet the creatures seem to rejoice in them.  Beauty, it is said, is in the eye of the beholder.  Have you ever stopped to think about beauty and exactly what that means to you as an individual?  I know that each of us find different things attractive.  I personally do not find anything beautiful about paisley, but my sister-in-law thinks it is the best.  I love the mountains and the sight of the rain moving among the trees this morning brings such wonderful memories of my trips to those mountains, while others I have spoken to say they hate the mountains.  That thought is something I cannot fathom, but I am sure there is a reason for their hatred.  I am not really all that crazy about pictures of the southwest, but in all fairness I have never been there.  I cannot say truthfully that I don't like that landscape without ever having visited it.

Experience shapes our opinion, in many ways, of beauty.  I always thought the ocean and beach were beautiful until I visited there.  We went to the ocean for the first time, shortly after a tropical storm had made its way up the coastline.  I was greatly disappointed.  The water was a murky brown like the lake near my house.  The sand was nice, but really nothing all that great.  The strange thing was I came back yearning for more, not of the ocean, but the deep, deep south.  What had me mesmerized?  It wasn't the beauty of the ocean, but the Spanish Moss and the houses that adorned the coastline.  I fell in love with the beauty of something other than what I went there for.

Today is Tiferet of Malchut or Beauty of Maturity

The Beauty of Maturity is finding that experiences of life have allowed you to find beauty in the things you would never have dreamed. A mature person allows God to show them true beauty in life and not rely on their world to define it.  A truly mature person has listened to the Master enough to know, without asking, where the beauty is in each and every situation or person.  This person will not only find the beauty, but they will seek it out.  An immature person will either immediately pick out or seek out the ugliness.

So, which one are you?  When you look through the looking glass, do you see the rain or are you anticipating a rainbow?

Shalom!~~~~~~~~~~~~