{"id":1574,"date":"2015-09-09T11:54:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T15:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/choosing-beauty\/"},"modified":"2015-09-09T11:54:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T15:54:00","slug":"choosing-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/choosing-beauty\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosing Beauty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Sister Spero<\/em><\/p>\n<p>God created flowers. Each species, fully developed, is beautiful. A flower cannot choose its own beauty. It begins with the seed, containing the nature of the parent plant. If the seed drops, or is placed, in soil with the right nutrients, it will grow. Development depends on water, good soil, and protection from predators. A plant cannot arrange this on its own. It cannot make itself produce flowers.<\/p>\n<p>We are the same, but, unlike flowers, we can choose our own beauty. (I\u2019m not thinking of make-up and exercise). We can cultivate spiritual beauty. We can ask for living water (John 4:14), avoid rocks and thorns (Matthew 13), and protect ourselves from predators. For me, the predators are stray thoughts that I can choose to embrace or ignore.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot choose what type of flower I am to become, but I can be a co-worker with God in his garden\u2014to blossom into the person God originally created me to be.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/20150909_093504-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-5624834\" src=\"http:\/\/www.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/20150909_093504-2-761x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Rose - Choosing Beauty\" width=\"584\" height=\"786\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Follow us<\/strong><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/communityofjesus.org\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/communityofjesus.org<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheCommunityOfJesus\/~4\/ZylJnRhyRDc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Sister Spero God created flowers. Each species, fully developed, is beautiful. A flower cannot choose its own beauty. It begins with the seed, containing the nature of the parent plant. If the seed drops, or is placed, in soil &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/choosing-beauty\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}