Life can be Beautiful!
Life can be Ugly, Mean, Vicious, and Unfair, but you and God can make it Beautiful!
In the beginning, live was all beautiful, but Sin entered the picture causing the beautiful to be marred. Many questions have been asked; volumes have been written in search of answers, but the questions remain. One thing we can be certain of is that directly or indirectly, Sin is the guilty culprit for all suffering! The penalty for our fore-parent’s sin, Adam and Eve, guarantees that life will have some ugly spots in it. Sometimes it can be mean and unfair! It can be so mean and ugly that some choose not to live it! The escape route is always present, but it only adds more misery to the already ugly!
Bill Shepard
Some would say that becoming a Christian is a cure for the ugliness of life, but I have not found that to be true. Neither did the patriarch, Job, not the Apostle Paul. Both were devout men of God, but both suffered immensely in their life’s experiences! Being a Christian does help, and I recommend it, but Christians still have some ugly situations to deal with. They hurt, they bleed, and cry just like other folk, but they have the comfort of the Lord to see them through the ugly places in their lives. With the Lord’s help, in times of ugliness, Life Can Be Beautiful!
I know a couple that attend the same church as I. It would seem to the observer that life dealt this couple a pretty raw hand. I watch them enter the building bringing their forty-year old daughter who has been an invalid for thirty-four of those forty years. I cannot help but notice the toll those years has taken on that couple. IT is written all over their faces, the struggle with lifting the weight, the confining responsibility; its all there, and one would not be human if they did not wonder how many times the question “why?”” has surfaced! Yet, I have never heard one word of complaint from them. They are faithful to present themselves along with their invalid daughter in the house of worship regularly. Many would have grown bitter, and gone into seclusion, but not this couple. Oh, I suppose they could have found an Escape Route somewhere along the way, but they chose to make something beautiful out of the hand they were given. Only heaven knows how many have been inspired by this couple’s choice including my own.
The abode is just one story of the millions that are lived out every day. We al know some. And if we started looking for answers, we would end at the same place we began! Questions often heard are: where did I go wrong? What did I do? Or not do? And of course, Why me? The answer may not lie in any of the above! It could be and most likely is, that life dealt an unfair hand, and the player with the choice to “play it” or “fold it!” – gamblers jargon!
If you have played one of those hands, you know the road you have followed! It has taken you along the bumpy road of “Self- pity,” “Blame of others,” across the “Valley of bitterness.” You might have even blamed God at times! You might have seen the door of living slowly closing, but you stopped it just in time. Thank God you did! You have decided that Life Can be Beautiful!
Out of the Ugly comes the Beautiful! Some of the most beautiful lives I have ever known were born out of the ugliness of diversity. Broken, defeated, bruised and battered lives have been transformed into beautiful, useful, and inspiring lives, by God’s Grace and the determination of individuals.
Perhaps no other life lived is a better example of what I am trying to say than that of Helen Keller, blind, deaf and mute. What a remarkable woman! And what a remarkable life! Around the world, millions have been inspired by the person who was determined to turn adversity into a thing of beauty! If you have never read this story, please do! Go immediately to your library or get the book elsewhere and read it. Curl up in your armchair of self-pity and absorb the inspiration this story offers. It is proof that come what may, Life Can be Beautiful!
There is no end to the examples one can produce to bear evidence that out of the ugliness of adversity beautiful lives can be lived. I must mention one another, that of President Franklin Roosevelt. This man led the nation out of the grip of the “Great Depression” and through the ugliest war that America has ever faced. Though a young man, I still recall the inspiration his famous “fireside chats” gave to a bewildering nation, and to the world. He offered inspiration and hope while seated in a wheelchair, having been left a cripple at an early age! We all remember his encouraging words, “All we have to fear, is fear itself.”
Even out of Nature comes the beautiful, born out of the ugly. Out of that vast, mysterious swampland known as the Okefenokee Swamp and called by the Indians the “land of the trembling earth,” comes a thing of beauty. Who could believe that this swamp, filled with deadly snakes, alligators, sinkholes and other deadly things would produce the beautiful and peaceful Suwannee River? Yet, thousands have looked on the shimmering beauty of those waters made popular by Stephen Foster’s romantic song. I remember how I felt when I first stood on the bridge overhead and watched this peaceful river flowing gently along. Yes, my dear fiends, Life Can be Beautiful! God and you can make it so!
Mr. Shepard is a native of Darlington, S.C., and a current resident of Piedmont, S.C. and author of “Mill Town Boy” and “Bruised”. He has been sharing his tales of growing up in Darlington for decades, and we are delighted to share them each week.
His mailing address for cards and letters is: Bill Shepard 324 Sunny Lane, Piedmont, S.C., 29673.
