beau·ty a combination of shape, color, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses.
Our spirit is infused with a rush of dopamine-driven joy when it confronts the beauty of a painting’s message and memory. The beauty of music’s rhythm and emotion. The beauty of watching the sun being swallowed by a darkened horizon.
But beauty is so much more than a means to a pleasurable end. Beauty is an inherent attribute of God that is reflected in everything he does. But most important is the pathway it creates for us to embrace the character of Jesus.
Here is where I want my mind to land when it thinks of beauty:
The expression of God’s glory and what Jesus did on the Cross…for me.
EVERYTHING God does is part of beauty as we know it on earth. Not just watching the Super Bowl with a big bowl of guacamole. Not just listening to a new song from Drake. Not just visiting Disneyland when the pandemic’s oppressive cover is lifted.
It is a spiritual imperative for Christians to REJECT the world’s ever-growing negativity and ACCEPT its pervasive beauty. For me right now, that beauty is watching snowflakes drizzling the palette below without a sound.
But more often we are apt to land on the negative and simply stop hunting for beauty. The hunt I’m talking about is the beauty of life as a follower of Jesus Christ. The unforced rhythms of grace. Peace through the storms of life. Freedom from living behind a mask.
As each day’s dawn cracks open our door, we should go on a HUNT FOR BEAUTY! And when things turn up negative (and they WILL), we should ask God to help us through that turbulence and continue our hunt for beauty with the confidence that it WILL come.
It may be the beauty of a sugary-white beach in Bali. Or the Mona Lisa’s magnificence. Or the majesty of Yosemite. But more likely, if we are hunting for it, beauty will emerge when we encounter a selfless act of Christ-like compassion for the least of these.
I ask God to help me look for and find beauty in and through HIM so I can acknowledge his love, presence, and protection.
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Will you HUNT for beauty today?
“When I look at the sky, which you have made, at the moon and stars, which you set in their places–what are human beings, that you think of them; mere mortals, that you care for them?” Psalm 8:3-4
