I had already had a name picked a couple days ago for this blog I was planning to start, but it just hit me this morning as I sat in church for the Good Friday prayer service just how appropriate it was.
The phrase "uncommonly beautiful" came to me perhaps a year ago now during a time I was spending with God on a treat. Originally, it had been an encouragement to myself about the way God sees me and my heart. It's painting on the wall in my room and every so often I will hear my Father whisper it to me again.
This blog is the product both of thoughts I had been having about starting one and a conversation I had with a mentor of mine about how I should incorporate my writing and use it for God. And when I made the official decision to start one, "Uncommonly Beautiful" was the first thing that came to me when I thought about what I should name it. However, after this morning and in this Easter weekend, I want to explore what I think is especially "uncommonly beautiful."
There is a scene in the movie "The Passion of the Christ" that moves me beyond words and causes me to weep without fail every time I have seen it so far. Jesus had just been brutally beaten and whipped by the Roman soldiers, his body torn to shreds and pouring blood (Isaiah 53:5) before he was dragged away. In the movie, (of course it's impossible to know what really happened) Mary, Jesus' mother, and Mary Magdalene have been watching the beating. Once their beloved Son and Teacher is taken away, Pilot's wife brings them white cloths to wipe up all the blood from the ground where Jesus was abused.
Now, I am not a big fan of gore -- in fact, I really hate it-- but the scene that follows is probably one of the most touching and beautiful things I have ever seen on screen. The Mary's get on their hands and knees and begin to use the cloths to wipe the stone ground, their hands and the trail of their clothing becoming covered with blood-- Jesus' blood. When the cloths are soaked, Mary Magdalene takes her head covering and uses it to keep wiping. The picture is so powerful to me. So uncommonly beautiful.
I want to be the one wiping up the blood! I have never understood why I think this when I see it. Blood is a symbol of death, the result of hatred against Christ, and the result of my sin. Yet, when I think about this verse in Revelation 7:14 ("they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.") and Ephesians 2:13 ("But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.") I think about how that blood is what has changed by life! That blood is what give me freedom, hope and peace! Morbid as it may sound, I want to touch it, feel it and be as near to it as possible, even if I get my clothing bloody. His blood is beautiful not because of some weird supernatural, physical property in it, but because it is the currency that bought my freedom, hope, joy, peace, and on and on and on...
Usually death makes me sad, but the death of my Savior gives me great joy because of it's transforming power. And here is where I see the connection between the words God spoke over me and Good Friday. Though usually blood is a reason to mourn and be reviled by and though sin makes things ugly, Jesus' blood was (and is) uncommonly beautiful upon the cross and because of it, God made a plain, sinful girl like me "Uncommonly Beautiful" because my sin is gone and I have freedom! Thank you, Jesus, for Good Friday.
"What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus; What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus." (Robert Lowry, 1876, Hymn: "Nothing but the Blood of Jesus")
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