"this terrifying sheer beauty"

The dwelling places of God have always been bowed women murmuring, “May it be to me as you have said.” We may bear the image of God but we may only bear His gift to the world when we willingly bear the pain of the birthing.

An altar precedes all art and sacrifice is the father of all story, offspring of the Word God with scars. What writer doesn’t bear wounds? How can we participate in the sufferings of the Word made flesh if we shirk the price? I have recoiled.

But there is only one bare way to let His light warm the cold — and vulnerability is this terrifying sheer beauty, a luminous transparency. To give life, we must lay ours down.

-- Ann Voskamp