This is Beauty Abandoned

The other day I was at work. I work at Pal's, a quick-service, drive-through, better-than-McDonald's restaurant. I was on sandwiches, which is, in my perspective, the most . . . big station. There's just so much to be done at the sandwich station, so when it gets busy there are often two people on the station: one to drop buns into the toaster and help keep things stocked, and the other to make the sandwiches themselves. I started the shift dropping buns for a nice girl named Misha. Everything was going well: we were working excellently as a team and I was getting slightly better at the actual making of the sandwiches.

Break time for Misha.

In the thirty minutes that followed, I struggled to get through each burger, dropping buns when I could, and dwindling the stock down to nothing. By the time Misha returned, lettuce was lying all over the place, there were onions in the tomatoes, and there was no cheese, buns, chicken, or pickles. I gave Misha my best puppy dog eyes, but to no avail. "Man this place was beautiful when I left it. I worked so hard to get it clean."

Beauty cannot endure without its creator.

Beauty may be able to survive, hanging on by a thread, but never will it flourish. The creator is the one who knows what's best for the beauty. The creator cares, and knows how to care better than anyone else in the world. The creator knows the beauty's inner workings.

Take for example . . . a work of art. The creator will cherish it, take care of it, love it. Like no one else, the artist will treat its creation like a king (figuratively of course), until that creation "expires" or a new, better, more efficient creation overtakes the old.

We are God's creation.

Here's the special part though: God never gets tired of us, He never leaves us for something better. The only problem is that God is love, thus He does not desire to force us to love Him. It's not in His nature, it's not who He is. True love cannot be forced. So God gave us a choice. When we remain in God's hands he will treat us right. He knows; He created us. Although life may not be easier, God will care for us, love us, make us better. And that process sometimes is hard.

So the choice. We can remain in God's eternal care, or we can abandon His love. We can turn our back on Him. We can take the wide, easy road. The "cool" path. There are so many ways we can be tempted toward this road. So many ways we can get tripped up, and fall down the cliff onto the wide path. And certainly, it seems easier.

We are beauty. We are beauty that will never be the victim of our Creator's abandonment. But we can abandon Him if we're not careful.

Are you beauty abandoned?