temporal/eternal beauty

Today is a gardening day here at the nest, and on gardening days I find some beautiful things, like parsley. Parsley as I normally see it has never been particularly beautiful to me, although it sure tastes good. While cleaning up my herb pot I came across this :



Yep, that's parsley. The gorgeous salmon color, and the lovely brittle delicacy put me in awe. Talk about going gracefully. We don't usually think about beauty in death, death is usually a sad ugly thing, but does it have to be?

I have been currently reading John Piper's book Don't Waste Your Life, and he has a whole chapter called Magnifying Christ through Pain and Death. In the book he says this:

"But how are we to magnify Christ in death? Or to put it another way: How can we die so that in our dying the surpassing value of Christ, the magnitude of his worth become visible?"

John Piper finds his answer Philippians 1, the high point of which I find to be verse 21 : "For to me, living is Christ, and dying is gain." My sincere hope is to be able to go out one day like parsley, with the beauty of hope in that to die is gaining a greater intimacy with Christ.

But for now I am still here to be used in whatever way God sees fit. And since I am here I shall give you something to cheer you up! A bird of the day!

This guy was in a Northpark window around valentines. I chose him for today because he was quirky, and the rocks match the parsley :)