Outside one of the most popular tourist sites in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, The Old Mill, an older gentleman sat playing his guitar and singing.  He was tucked into the deep shade of the creaky front porch were it was still hot but he escaped the suns beating waves.

He sang old gospel songs mixed with mountain ballads.  His voice pleasant but not amazing.  There was a very small display of old CD’s still in the manufacturer’s wrapping but clearly remnants of earlier pressings.

My husband who adores the bluegrassy twanging sounds of this type musical offering stops to buy one of the old CDs.  The singer and my husband converse between the man singing and just playing his guitar. Our daughter pouts over not getting a shirt she wanted. Our niece stands to the side and I sit waiting in my wheelchair wondering if I can find out his story.

Then silently and shyly our youngest niece, a 16-year-old whose soft heart is well known by our family slips around me.  In a flash my husband and I see her drop a $20 into the old man’s tip bucket. 

I look at her hand dropping the $20 in and I see a rare beauty.  I know how much of her hard earned money she has allotted herself for our weekend trip and I am swept away in the offering she gives.  I see the deep sweet generosity of a soul whose wisdom wraps itself around her precious soul. 

She hastens to tell us, at our surprised and questioning looks, that she has used her own money.  I assure her we know.  Knowing she is easily embarrassed I turn my face away from her so my eyes brimming with tears are not visible.

A true offering given to support the ministry of a musical missionary by a heart nestled deeply in the soul of a young teenage girl.  I marvel at the purity of her gift and I see another layer of our nieces sweet, sweet heart and soul.  I marvel and I pray for her.  A prayer she will come to understand her real value and gift to the human race.

I pray she will see her beauty and value in and through God’s eyes. Because in this harsh and outwardly trapped society we live in it is hard for tender hearted people, whose greatest gift to the world is seeing the best and beauty of it beneath the glitz and blitz covering the filth. That world doesn’t appreciate the love through which our niece views it, instead it often seeks to destroy it because it cannot be like it. Deep down I believe most of society longs to love and see the beauty our niece sees naturally but they can’t in their race to make themselves number one, to fit into the right group or keep up with an ever rising economic status bar.My heart overflows…I am so blessed to know this wonderful, loving, artistic and tender person!

This marvelous selfless act astonishs me.  What a true beauty resides within our niece’s soul.  I pray she never becomes corrupted by the evil of this life.  I pray to be more giving like our niece for I have seen a peek of Jesus in her and she is beautiful.
Oh so beautiful!

-Faye