Lipstick

I want to share a story I read in Rob Bell's book 'SexGod'. It depicts a terrible scene at a concentration camp as observed by a British Lieutenant whose toops have just begun the process of liberating those captured. While this scene can be gruesome, it also is a great illuminator into the human condition. He writes:

"I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women and children collapse as you walked by them...One saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference..."

It is easy to see here the injustice that was done on these souls. It was anti-human. It was Hell on earth. It certainly is not a depiction of the Divine - and yet that is what God tells us we are. (Gen. 1:27) There are many ways in which we bring Hell on earth. It happens when we act like animals with no regard for the people our actions hurt. This can range from the Greed that tells us the weak get trampled and the strong prevail, to the Lust that causes men to rate woman solely based on their bodies' proportions.

But there is also a chance for us to bring Heaven on earth. God works through us to show love to the world. When we live our lives for others and for God we will find that people will come alive and see the light. To qoute Bell, "How you treat the creation reflects how you feel about the Creator." The British Lieutenant continues his story as he writes,

"It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet lips. I saw a woman dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again - they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity."

God works in mysterious ways. What is a way that you can treat someone like a bearer of the divine this week? Don't fall into the temptation of objectifying people like they are just another coworker you need to knock down and surpass on the corporate ladder, or just another woman who was created for you to ogle. Find a way to bring Heaven to earth, even if it means putting on a bit of lipstick.