"Miss?" 

He does't call me by my name anymore, just "Miss." Brown eyes and dark lashes curve shadows across his face. Light falls down his scarred, stretched, puffy arm. Bands of pale and pink skin, stitched together by ghosty white slices of his once-smooth arm. 

Moses. A baby drawn out of the Nile. Moses, an encounter with God and a bush on fire. 

"Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." Exodus 3:5

"Miss?"

For us to encounter God, he will show us Holy Ground. 

Birds break into the breeze with their own songs I've never heard, sung from branch to branch. 

Sin hammers our flesh raw and evil. 

"Do flowers and dogs sin?"

Cursed ground, cursed lungs, cursed thorns. The garden of Eden fell into shadow. 

Betrayal covered in a lie, damned peace to hell. We the fallen. We the broken. We the cursed. The ground cursed, too. Trees? Yes, trees. All of creation. 

"Shhh," I whisper, "Listen. Listen to the birds. Do you hear them singing?"

The huddle of young lean in and quiet their voices of question and youth and wisdom, child-like faith. Out the open wall and into the tops of tree branches and green plants we stare in silence. Pairs of eyes light up around the circle, and freckles bounce up on her usually somber face. She looks beyond the birds to the hands of the Creator and broken skin. 

"God makes things beautiful

even though they sin."

The silence is broken with beauty. The groaning in replaced with salvation. 

The Garden of Eden unfolds like a pop-up book and startles us. When the shadow fell and our back turned on love, we think He could have left us in darkness. But that is not who He is. He left beauty in the pain. 

Sunshine. 

Color. 

Flowers. 

Intertwining bark and aging hands.

Moss like velvet and sweet juice. 

I swallow every tear except the ones already in my eyes. "Yes, God makes beautiful things."

Beauty in this earth, beauty despite the curse.

That's the point isn't it? In all the hurt and in the dirt while we kick at another and at God, he comes down and makes beauty. He is beauty. He is Holy.