Beautiful with God's beauty

Luke's gospel tells us: "In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin's name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her:
Good morning!

You're beautiful with God's beauty,

Beautiful inside and out!

God be with you."
 
This morning I woke and fought to go back to sleep for an hour. I lost. It was cold in the house and dreary outside. The possible snow seemed to have gone the way of my savings and the cold ground was simply white with frost.
 
No angel greeted me.
No angel said hello.
No angel said next year will be great.
 
But when I pick up my Bible this morning, I read that indeed I am beautiful inside and out. Isn't that amazing? All I've done to muck up yesterday, all I've failed at, and God is with me, with us.
 
I discovered a couple of days ago the fact that my favorite old song writer/singer/poet Rich Mullins is featured on You Tube, still, 13 years after his amazingly untimely death in an automobile accident. I spent an afternoon listening to song and song and interview after interview and tears rolled down my cheeks.
 
I asked, quite seriously, why would God take him and leave me. Why would he allow such a talent, someone who could do so much for the world, be taken from the world while leaving little ol' me who does so little and can't even keep from tripping over his own spiritual feet?
 
And Rich finally might have answered it himself. At one point in a concert, he said, "If you want entertainment, then Christian music is good as it gets. But if you want spiritual enrichment, go to church. Read the scriptures."
 
He added, "I think the scriptures point out that God is right and the rest of us are just guessing."
 
Friends, I don't know all the people who read these little things. I don't even know why, a year passed, that I am still writing them. They bring in no money. They bring in no people to my churches. They don't change lives that I'm aware of. But I keep writing because somehow, someway I think God wants me to. I open a vein and it pores out.
 
God wants us to do what we've been called to do, whatever that is. Rich was called to write and sing and play and give his money to an Indian reservation in Arizona. Me? I've been called to write and preach and pray and hope and give whatever I am to whomever I can. That's it. You? You've been called to do whatever it is you do for the betterment of the body of Christ.
 
We all have our niche. We all are beautiful with God's beauty. In Ephesians it says that we are God's masterpiece. Let that be the way you live today. Be a masterpiece for someone who does not know Jesus.
 
Good morning.
God be with you.