Christmas beauty

Sitting here looking at our Christmas tree and my focus keeps going back to this one branch
where there isn’t an ornament. I feel like one should be there because it looks out of place
to the rest of the tree. Instead of just enjoying the beauty of the rest of the tree, My eyes are
continually drawn back to that part of the tree where the ornament is missing. It made me
think of how sometimes we can become so focused on one or more imperfections in
ourselves or in others that we forget to enjoy and rejoice in all the rest of the beautiful parts.
I have been guilty of it especially in the looks of my own “tree”… when I am tooooo focused
on the imperfections of some of my “branches” that I forget to notice and thank him for the
branches he has already pruned and adorned with his beauty and to also thank him for the
ones he is working on to beautify.
Lord, you are the creator of beauty and I stand in awe at your wonderful works. I thank you
that You created us in your image and likeness and that you are continually perfecting us
from glory to glory. Thank you for being the gardener- pruning and adorning us with your
beauty in the right seasons- then putting it on display for the world to see. I pray Father that
you will help us keep our focus on your marks of beauty and not the imperfections that
become distractions. Thank you for giving us eyes to see ourselves and others as you
do…holy, perfect and blameless. Thank you for grace, mercy and patience while we are all
being beautified through the spirit of the Lord. In Jesus beautiful name, Amen
“Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all,
with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same
image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
“And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet
now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and
unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:”