Beauty is in the eye of the "be" holder - musings of a cancer patient on her last day of chemo and Yom Kippur

This morning I woke up and I felt soo incredibly good. I couldn't wait to go to the gym and run. I had a massage and reflexology yesterday (gift from my dad and his wife Ellie) and maybe that's why I felt so good physically but ultimately, I believe it's becuase of the many prayers by which so many people are holding me.
So, as I drove away from the house I realized that I didn't have my "do-rag that I normally wear, and I was already too far away from the house so that if I turned around to get it, I wouldn't have the workout time that I wanted to before I had to go to chemo today, so I faced sort of a dilemma of vanity, should I go anyway, and just be little baldy/fuzzhead there and forget my vanity? Yes, I'm going I thought becuase it doesn't matter what I look like. I'm going to run. As I drove toward the gym I looked up at the sky and it was this beautiful expanse of changing pinks to purple-edged cumulus clouds or swaths or orange cirrus brushed out as a backdrop to frame the rising of the sun. It's amazing to me how each sunrise, sunset, indeed every collection of clouds and color at any moment is unique, and that is just one way that God displays who He is, and has done so since the beginning of creation as we know it.
So, I get to the gym and I'm running and feeling really just so grateful to be able to run and feeling so good and listening to the words of Natalie Grant singing "the life you've been livin, the day you've been given were made for somethin beautiful. Life-don't let it pass you by- becuase you were created for-something beautiful" and I'm thinking a bit about how this bald/sort of barely fuzz-head chick is running on the treadmill and how funny she must look to other people, but that God is doing something beautiful. Something beautiful that shows who He is. Then, I thought of the saying "beauty is in the eye of beholder."
We tend to think of the idea of beauty as a subjective kind of experience; that one person may look on another and see beauty and others might acutally see the opposite. But I was thinking about the word "beholder" and how, in the original aramaic in the torah (old testament book of Exodus) when God tells moses "I am that I am" the I am is actually a form of the verb to be. So that it could be said" I be that I be". Hmm. beholder, I be, be...God is the "be" holder, the one who is life and who has created us to be the holder of his being and at the same time holds our being in existence since before we were born, as it says in Psalm 139. In him we live and move and have our be-ing becuase God uniquely formed/forms and held/holds us. He uniquely has woven and knit us together to display his beauty and the uniqueness of each of His creation, whether it is today's bombastic display of lightning and thunder amids a tempestuous sky, or simply in what we have each been uniquely created to do on this earth at this time in our lives. All displays the beauty of God and we each were specially created in God's image to be held, to be a holder of the beauty of Christs regenerative life.
I was reminded that God is the author of beauty, the original artist that created us to contain His being so that all would see it. It doesn't matter whether man looks at us and he thinks we're pretty becuase that's not what it's about. God is the one that he has created to hold his being and that's what it means that beauty is in the eye of the "be" holder. God's eye sees his creation in each of us and longs to fill that "holding" place with His life. At the same time, as we live and move and have our being in Christ, he takes this rough diamond that he created all of us to be - a diamond created with incredible force of pressure and heat so to speak - and though we look like some ordinary, dull stones, he holds us and forms us and fashions and facets us with life's experiences so that the life of Christ can be reflected in us and be be-held.
As I was running, I was looking up through the window at this one cloud that was rising gently behind the mountains and to the right of it was a swath of darker clouds that were approaching it and I thought of that scripture in Psalm 27 that says "The LORD is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?" and how it is the Light of Christ that is revealed in our bodies as we are given over to death all day long, so that all can see that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. That is why we have these treasures in jars of clay (2 Cor 4). Wow.
So, our beauty is in the eye of the BE holder, who is ever-fashioning us so that His life can be beheld by others. Wow.....all that from just leaving my do-rag at home....but there's more.

I thought about how God is in the business of bringing beauty from ashes and how chemo - poisoning cells and death is necessary to bring life, and how losing my hair is a death, too but there will be beauty from it and there already is because God's Holy spirit is working and living and active in me and that's the beauty of it. There must be a death of something to ultimately have life. When we choose to give our entire lives to christ, he gives beauty for what was meant for ashes and he gives strength for fear, which is just more evidence that He is who He is, the great I am, the great I Be...
"...A crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor" Isaiah 61:3

- We are all a diamond in the rough be-held by Christ Jesus the messiah.

For those of us that are Jews or Jewish believers in Christ reading this blog, I can't help but think about how this is also the day of atonement. In the Jewish tradition, the book of life is opened and we are urged to mourn for our sins and tchuvah, or turn around from them and go the god's way instead, that this scripture about beauty for ashes is so appropriate. Without Christ Y'shua our messiah, we do not have forgiveness of sins and the only way to make atonement is the shedding of blood. Christ is the ultimate sacrifice becuase he is the messiah to come. He was and is God in the flesh who loved us so much despite what we have done and even will do that he chose to pay for it all by the shedding of his own blood becuase the animal sacrifices were no longer sufficient.
So, we do not have to go around mourning in sackcloth and ashes or sitting shiva for our own sin and fast on this day becuase Christ has come. He came to give us the beauty and freedom of forgiveness of sin and release from the ashes-saved from being separated by god by our sin. So why wouldn't we embrace messiah? Y'shua is the one for whom our souls were created to behold and beheld so that he could work his beauty and exchange it for our ashes. No amount of mitvah can make up for our sin, only Y'shua's death and resurrection can. So, this Yom Kippur I'm reminded to look to Christ as the final sacrifice and thank him for forgivenss and life and beauty in every moment. We've been created for something beautiful, to be "Be-held."

Wow, God is good and even though we encounter hardship, his arms are open wide...

Blessings,
Julie