The title of this post refers to one of my favorite songs by Sara Groves and Matt Bronlewee; it’s also the title track of Sara’s album Add to the Beauty. I want to share the lyrics with you before expounding a little more.
We come with beautiful secrets
We come with purposes written on our hearts, written on our souls
We come to every new morning
With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can holdRedemption comes in strange places, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we areAnd I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That’s burning up insideIt comes in small inspirations
It brings redemption to life and work
To our lives and our work
It comes in loving community
It comes in helping a soul find it’s worthRedemption comes in strange places, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we areAnd I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That’s burning up insideThis is grace, an invitation to be beautiful
This is grace, an invitation
When I first heard this album I found myself trying to relate to what Sara was singing about. This song in particular encourages us to “add to the beauty” by “tell[ing] a better story” in “shin[ing] with the light that’s burning up inside.” But what does this mean? My story at the time of first hearing this song was anything but beautiful. My life was quickly evolving into a tragic, messy series of failures. Or so it seemed. And the last thing I wanted to do was give testimony to the shame, fear, pain and disappointment I bore.
Everyone has a story worth sharing. Photo courtesy Tom Branch
Now almost five years later, upon hearing Grace’s “invitation to be beautiful,” and after anxiously awaiting Redemption’s arrival then suddenly experiencing it in “strange places and small spaces” in my heart and life, I understand better how even a seemingly tragic failure can be a beautiful, better story to tell. If we’re willing to tell it. . .
I’ll Share. Then You Share.
I’d like to share my story with you in a series of posts that I hope will encourage you to “shine with the light that’s burning up inside of you” as you begin (or continue) to share your own story of redemption. As Sara and I have come to realize, we all “come with beautiful secrets” and “purposes written on our hearts” and souls. There is room for redemption in all of our broken, messy lives.
I was lost in a horrible pit of deepest darkness, a prisoner suffering in iron chains (as Psalm 107 describes). I was wrecked by an eating disorder while enduring a slow, agonizing abandonment in my first marriage. I felt completely hopeless and feared being forever confined to this darkness.
But then, Grace called and Redemption’s beauty came. The Truth illuminated that dark dungeon of my heart and drove out the darkness and replaced it with a growing, flickering flame: a new story with Redemption’s beauty brilliantly displayed for me and all the world to see. I cannot deny the light of Christ that invaded and awakened my darkened soul and has been burning brightly inside me since then. No, I must shine and share my story. As Psalm 107 urges us,
“Let the Redeemed of the Lord say so.”
And let it be done for the display of the beauty of Christ’s redemption in our lives.
Sarah Groves performs “Add To The Beauty” live with Steve Mason from Jars Of Clay