you’re beautiful
Ashley Munroe penned the message “You’re beautiful” on nearly 2,000 notes and then placed one on each locker in her high school. Via surveillance cameras, school authorities saw Ashley distributing the notes. The principal assumed she was causing trouble and suspended her. Several hundred students, however, signed a petition to help Ashley avoid punishment. Perhaps her best reward was hearing from a girl who had planned to commit suicide that day but did not because of Ashley’s message.
you’re beautiful
I was just 16 when I visited Rome. I toured the ancient catacombs as well as St. Peter’s Basilica. They’re both marvels of human creativity, evoking wonder with their enduring tribute to the way humans can chisel stone and dig into the earth and craft beauty from raw elements. In both the cavernous tunnels and the vast domed cathedral, I experienced deep reverence. I can only imagine what the artisans of these sacred spaces must have felt as they concluded their labor.
contemplate the beautiful
Edgar Allan Poe once wrote: “The pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from contemplation of the beautiful.” The purest and ultimate pleasure, then, according to the psalmist, is our contemplation of God.
David’s chief desire and longing in life was to live in the presence of Yahweh…
