REFLECTIONS, ON BEAUTY, ON LOVE.

As I wake up to the cries of the cock crowing, signaling the emergence of the dawn of the New Year. The brilliance of the early morning sun filtered by the translucent blinds across my window, induce soothing warmth on my drowsy eyes. The sweet songs of the African sparrows as they glide effortlessly over the tall palm trees, their beautiful foliage a testimony of God's creative energy...I said, "Thank You Jesus".

In a flash, I remembered my childhood, my first teddy bear, the love of my family, and the reason for my being - a fragment of my God. I was inspired, to write and to keep writing like Habakkuk, like Daniel, keep writing, about life, about beautiful things, about beautiful people, and beautiful times...and say, "Thank you Jesus".

This beauty, the beauty in nature, out of which we are carved. Nature does not make all men great, nor all great men happy. But nature does show by her constant devotion to our needs that mankind is the purpose of her being, the reason for her existence.

I reflect this beauty, as all men can. A quality to be beheld, and not calibrated or rationed. It is freely given by grace. It is a reflection of the greatness of nature and the love of the creator that such a panorama of multifarious things on earth were inserted for our pleasure. It is thus natural that we reflect this beauty in our own existence. It is this which the soul perceives and desires to exhibit...the physical image of an invincible God.

The ability to exhibit these beautiful qualities lies within that powerful energy called "Love". A man's love blooms fully in the warmth of admiration and clamps shut in the coldness of rejection. A beautiful thing, like sweet pink babies, continually deserves love. When we congregate and sing out praises to the most high and we offer ourselves for selfless service to mankind, we offer the Ultimate Love, ‘Agape’. Our beauty must lie, not in our protoplasmic facade, but the ability to become the embodiment of all positive qualities, promoting harmony among men and peace throughout the world.

We are born into this world and something within us thirsts after its likeness, as the infant thirsts after milk from its' mother's bosom. We crave to be a miniature of everything excellent and lovely, so that we become one with God - who is within us. We reflect our basic instincts for purity, goodness and compassion. Our heart's poetry traces a path in the universe in search of the Ultimate Love; to which we earnestly refer all our well being - attempting in all our actions to resemble the supreme entity. This is the point that we are driven, the factual cul-de-sac, as we pray and search for the meaning of life, we find, that the ultimate is LOVE.

I found that love deep inside of me, on reflection upon God. I found similar creative energies, the ability to express thoughts with brilliant clarity, to reproduce nature on canvas, in sweet melodies of musical renditions, in verses of sweet poetry - a renaissance man. I am easily lifted by the sounds of cooing babies and giggling children, knowing that I had a definable part in their existence. I derive pleasure in watching their physical features develop more and more, forming as it grows, a remarkable likeness to my own - and I thank God for giving me the power to love in those children, what I desire most in myself - inner beauty.

We must realise now more than ever, that beauty resides, not on the fold of our skin or the structure of our physiological density, but in the power of God's love that so effervesces from deep within us, bubbling over into the life of others. And, as for pain and sorrow, they only teach us how to live, how to love and how to forgive, and keep giving, giving...

Such is the Ultimate Love...

George Honey Ashiru
2009