“God
looked at what he had done and saw that it was very good”
Genesis 1:10
I
do not believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I think beauty is an objective thing.
Rather it is a “something” that is real, that is a reflection of God.
This means that there are many things which each of us
call beautiful but which are not. That
which is not in some way, shape or form a reflection of God is “something”
but it is not beauty, rather a departure from beauty.
The
Story of God and our world is a story of beauty gone wrong (Genesis 1-3) but
which will be made beautiful again (Isaiah 65 and Revelation).
In between, you and I have been written in the drama of the battle for
God, for beauty.
I
think one of the primary definers of what it means to be human is the desire for
something more, something more beautiful than what we settle for.
Buddhists tells us to chill out, there isn’t something more, it’s
your unquenchable desire that makes you miserable.
Christianity tells us there is something more, don’t settle for the
lesser, false, and imitation beauties of a corrupted world, instead go for the
beauty of God because it’s on its way and cannot be stopped and it’s what
you were built for. You weren’t
built to settle for less. Settling
for less is a slow death.
Two
of my favorite places in the world are the Swiss Alps and Yosemite National Park
in California and Nevada. Their
beauty is actually so exquisite that it hurts.
Such beauty is sharp, overwhelming, stunning, yet also makes me want
more, want somehow to fully grasp it, take it all in, experience it fully, but I
can’t. There’s something
more there that I can’t have and I want it.
In the Alps and Yosemite no matter how high I climbed (have you ever
noticed that the most beautiful things in the world are often also the most
dangerous?), it wasn’t high enough, no matter far in I would go, it wasn’t
deep enough, even though it was higher and deeper than ever before. It’s
like a tease, offering the best I know, yet awakening in me the desire for that
something more that can’t be had in this life.
Because
of this I know there is God. Every
other proof for God falls short in comparison to this one.
I even think that’s true of you too, even if you don’t know it yet!
“We do not want merely to see beauty
. . . . we want something else
. . . . which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see,
to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of
it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses,
and nymphs and elves.” C.S. Lewis
”
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’-that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye
need to know”
John Keats “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
John Keats “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
“Beauty
will save the world,” says a prince in a Dostoevsky story
The
Bible begins with beauty. In Genesis‘s
opening chapter the refrain reads “And God saw that it was good.” The Hebrew
word may be translated either as good
or as beautiful.
The feel of the whole chapter changes if one hears God proclaim that the light,
the sun, the greenery, the animals are all beautiful, and mankind very
beautiful. Beauty is way more than
something pleasing to the eyes. Beauty
is harmony in the world, it is being in touch with God.
How
does your relationship with God guide what you define as beautiful?
For
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