I See "How Beautiful" It Is

This Sunday God had fun and created a music video for me. He must have been bored!

The communion song was How Beautiful, by Twila Paris. I know, it's not the newest song, but the melody is timeless and our choir sang it perfectly. I've always loved this song. I even had it sung at my wedding.

I came back from communion, knelt to pray and after a few minutes did the usual, studying of the people walking by me. As I saw soul after soul receive the Eucharist, that's when my personal music video began and I was struck with how true the lyrics of the song were. The chorus is simple,
How Beautiful, how beautiful
How beautiful is the body of Christ.

First a little girl passes by in a smocked dress, then her older sister who was awkwardly eleven-years-old.

Then a mom and her three sons.

Then a grandfather and his grandson.

Then a young woman with Down Syndrome.

Then a Filipino woman. A black woman. An Indian man.

An usher who is permanently confined to a wheelchair.

It was such a privilege to look around the community of people I worship with and see, not what the world defines as beauty, but what God does, and to witness it as those words were being sung. The world has a very narrow view of what is beautiful, and if you look over a long span of time that definition changes with the wind. But I got to see real beauty in the form of the individuals who make up the body of Christ.