When I was a kid, my parents used to send me out in the fields to gather nettles. I knew from previous painful experiences that going bare-handed or barefoot was not a bright idea, so I made sure I always had my gloves and socks on. My mother used nettles as food for the pigs but also in delicious stews cooked for us. I've always wondered how the pigs could eat them raw without getting their mouths sore.
When I was 8 or 9 years old, I saw a cartoon version of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Wild Swans". In this tale, Elisa, a 15-year old princess decides to save her brothers after they had been turned into swans by their wicked stepmother. To help them regain human form, she has to gather nettles with her bare hands and knit them into shirts. I could almost feel her pain as I looked at her red and sore hands, but I also admired her greatly for her courage and endurance.
From then on, Elisa has become a sort of symbol for me - a symbol of inner purity and self-sacrificing love. Even back then, I could see beauty and value in such human qualities and contemplating them in others touched me in a very special way. Little did I know at that time that God was gently opening my heart, preparing me for another encounter with a much greater love.
Later when I read and understood the story of Jesus Christ - his pure life, his love for us, his sacrifice, his painful and humiliating death and his resurrection, I remembered Elisa again and I cried. Only this time, there were no nettles, only a crown of thorns and a cross. Andersen was a Christian. He must have seen the crown of thorns in Elisa's stinging nettles.
The nettles are a symbol of trials and suffering, but also of pride and vanity. Wasn't it pride and vanity that made the evil queen curse the 12 brothers and turn them into swans? Wasn't it pride and vanity that made people reject Jesus and send him to die on a cross? Isn't it pride and vanity that still crucify him today?
God hates pride and vanity, yet he loves nettles. He loves them so much that he bathes them in delicate dew drops, just like he does with the most exquisite roses and the pure lilies of the field. And when the sun rises, its light makes them glisten in the early-morning dew and, for a moment, they appear as if illuminated and softened from within. There are words and acts that touch even the most callous hearts, even if only for a moment.
This blog is born of my conviction that one of the deepest and most unfulfilled longings in this day and age is the longing of the heart to be touched by beauty - not the glamorous, superficial kind of beauty that has almost hijacked the true meaning of the word, but the transforming, intoxicating beauty that can find its deepest roots in Christ - that beauty which, in Dostoevsky's words, "shall save the world".
It is my hope that, with God's help, I will succeed in revealing a glimpse of that beauty and the very little I can offer will become a bridge towards the infinitely more. And as the nettles are made beautiful by the soft morning dew drops, our hearts will be enriched and transformed by the truth of things "too good to be true".
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