"La Vita è Bella" - the third letter in the collection of letters to my Daughter.

Dear Daughter,

La Vita e Bella - Life is Beautiful! 

You will need to remind yourself this when you walk in the midst of the ugliness of life. It will be easier if you know that whatever God has created is beautiful - it is us who fail to take care of our entrusted treasures. 

There are breathtaking places in the world. Their scenic view captivates marvel and wonder. In some lands, however, you will not have to walk much further away from their magnificent landscapes to see deep brokenness freely roaming on the very streets where beauty lives - shattered hopes, hungry stomachs and shoeless feet all glistening like coals on the crown of gold.

Life may even show you places of justices that are building scales of bribe, greed and cruelty. And palaces of kindness being adorned with fall trees - beautiful in colour, but carrying death inside. And while I hope that world will be at peace in your time, just like my ancestors had hoped for my generation, don't say life is not beautiful when you see countries fight, blood covered cities and giants of poverty; and when you see people standing for what is right, alone. Do not be surprised when their progress seems like a drop in the ocean and when there are more who oppose them than those cheering them on.

Even then life is beautiful, my sweet-heart! Because beauty is like the sun. When what is not good comes like a cloud-covered-night, it does not mean that sun will not shine again. It surely will. 

There is a power that God has given his children and it works much like how resuscitation works. A doctor comes, knowing well that the heart lying before is no longer beating, gets down with all his or her strength and begins to push hard to get that very dying heart to pump blood again and give oxygen to the entire body. So be that doctor! Don't let the despair of the dying heart steal your purpose of what you are meant to do and what you can do. And don't stop once you start. Don't look to the left or the right. Don't focus on who is with you and who is not. Just focus on doing your best to revive that heart. And in this lies the very act of beauty.

Life is beautiful! Ask God to show you his beauty that dwells here on earth and He surely will. Your job will be to find out what you need to do to preserve it or in many case to be obedient in being His instrument of resurrection of what lies beneath the debris.

You will see many hands building their cottages on the lots that please their eyes. They are gazers of beauty which is already chiseled out and placed on the show for them. But you my daughter look for beauty in the hidden and in the open, in the seemingly ugly and in the obviously beautiful - wherever God has placed it. 

And should you hear a call - a call to seek this beauty in the most unlikely places - jump right at it!

"From Zion, perfect in beauty,
    God shines forth." 

Psalm 50:2 (NIV).

~All images taken from google images~