She Looks Like Dawn

She looks like dawn.

What does that even mean?

For me, it’s a testament of God’s faithfulness.

      In March of this year, I started to attend the School of Ministry, a ministry school for young adults in Toronto, Canada. Within the first two weeks of being there, I felt like my whole world began to fall apart. Everything I’d believed about myself, my family, God, everything. It was like God had taken my very carefully organized, very carefully guarded box of beliefs, dumped it out on the ground and said, “Let’s go through this and take out everything that isn’t true.”

     Very quickly, I realized that everything I’d spent so much time holding together was coming apart. I knew it was good, even though it really hurt. I knew it was better for God to shape my mind and beliefs, rather than let my own broken heart try to figure life out.

But it really scared me.

I felt like I didn’t know anything about anything anymore.

I didn’t even know myself.

       Over the next couple of weeks, God began to instill little bits of my identity into my heart. Just little things like, “You’re so beautiful”, “Your value doesn’t come from your work”, or “Your heart and emotions are precious gifts”. Then one morning, He told me that I was like the dawn.

What?

      I kind of pushed it to the back of my mind. I can be quite bad that way. I'm very logical so if it doesn’t make sense to me, I usually try to push it away. Acceptance of things I don't understand is not a strong point of mine.

      But He kept saying it, over and over and over. I couldn’t ignore it. Every time I would go to Him and ask how He saw me, He would just say that I was like the dawn. A few days passed and I grabbed my Bible, my coat and my highlighter to go outside for some God time. When I sat down and randomly opened my Bible, the first verse I saw was Song of Songs 6:10, which in my translation reads, “Who is this young woman? She looks like the dawn. She is beautiful like the moon, pure like the sun, awe-inspiring like those heavenly bodies.”

It was then that I realized I couldn’t really ignore this anymore. Instead, I asked God to explain to me what He meant. What did He mean when He said I was like the dawn? And just as God likes to do, He started to talk to me.

The dawn comes every morning, no matter the circumstances. My identity was as certain as the dawn.

The dawn is a hope of a new beginning, the hope of a new day. God had given me a billion new hopes, free from shame and condemnation.

The dawn is beautiful and noticed. I was beautiful and noticed.

The dawn grows in splendor, light, and colour. I would grow in splendor, light and colour in God.

     There’s something peaceful and beautiful and still about dawn. The dawn doesn’t try to be beautiful. It doesn’t feel pressure to perform. Just by existing, by playing the role God intended it to play, it captures the hearts and eyes of so many.

     Last Saturday, a few friends and myself got up early to drive to a park about 20 minutes away to watch the sunrise. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I have willingly got to up early just to see the sunrise. I am not very much of a morning person.

But this morning was different.

     The entire time we were there, God was speaking to me about the sunrise, pointing out things about the dawn that I never would have ever thought about before. The six of us sat on the rocks in semi-silence and watched the colors come up over the city.

    Even though there were people around me, it was such an intimate moment with God. I literally felt like He was showing me a picture of myself. I was like the dawn. I felt known. I felt safe. I felt like I could just be and not do.

She looks like dawn.