Help us remember...

"The heart at the centre of the human body represents the beauty that is at the heart of life. We often define ourselves in terms of the ugliness of what we have done or become rather than in terms of the essence of our life. We are made in the image of God, in the image of the One who is Beauty.

Think of a beautiful plant suffering from blight. If botanists were shown such a plant, even if they had never seen that particular type of plant before, they would define it in terms of its essential features and life-force. They would not define it in terms of its blight. Rather, the blight would be described as foreign to the plant, as attacking its essence. This may seem an obvious point botanically, but perhaps it is such an obvious point that we have missed the point when it comes to defining what is deepest within us. In our Western Christian tradition we have tended to understand human nature in terms of its blight. The doctrine of original sin defines us as essentially sinful rather than seeing that sin is attacking the essence of our being. What is deepest in us is the beauty of our origins." J. Philip Newell, Echo of the Soul

!Lord! Help me to walk out of such a 'western' mindset and help me to remember...