Beautiful

“Light of the world you stepped down into darkness, opened my eyes let me see, beauty that made this heart adore you, hope of a life spent with thee.”

We sang this song in church and as I sang the words I thought of the word beauty. I love the word, but I have yet to be able to fully know why. I have theories and thoughts on of course (previous post “Words”). But this song says that “You (God) opened my eyes and let me see, beauty, that made this heart adore You.” God let me see beauty. He has defined it, because He created it. We are fascinated with it because we came from it.

Psalm 27:4- “One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I will seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to meditate in His temple.”
Psalms 50 says that because God dwells in Zion it is the perfection of beauty.

We are apparently called to pursue beauty, the Author of beauty. We pursue our version of beauty in ourselves, and in others, but we pursue it because we have a God shaped vacuum in our lives. We try to fill it with the easy parts of God, like beauty, but if we take anything away from God it becomes distorted. The same thing happens when take beauty apart from the Creator of it, we twist it. It mocks the One who gave it to us, but even still we pursue this fake beauty and are continually satisfied by it. However, when we are allowed a glimpse of true beauty, wherever that may be, it takes our breath away. It doesn’t matter if we are walking with God or not, if he allows you to see even a fraction of His beauty, in a sunset or in a child, or in anything else, it is indelible, and awe-inspiring. I think its one of the ways He draws His children to himself, lost and found.

The amazing thing happens as you walk with God and your relationship grows and you get farther and farther into the reality of God, you can start to see His beauty and the kind we pursued before gets more and more shallow and dissatisfactory. It so much more intense than a “Shallow Hal” spell or whatnot, we don’t see supermodels in everyone, we see something much greater. So much greater that even to call it beautiful is to cheapen it.

It’s not just in seeing beauty in a person or an object; it’s seeing it in situations. You can see beauty in situation that are beyond your own control, it is there because God takes control and you know that you are not strong enough and it is beautiful.

You can see it when someone you love dies and suddenly you are all together, surrounded by a “cloud of witnesses” united, if even far apart, fighting grief and hardships, and its beautiful.

Beautiful is more than a more poetic synonym for attractive. It is a description of God, and as I make God more and more my life, the more and beautiful my life gets. Not me, but my attitudes, my thoughts, my words, the more they are surrendered to God, the more they become beautiful. I want to be the most beautiful woman I can possibly be, not because I am the closest to a synonym of attractive I can be, but because I am closest to God as I can be, because that’s when life truly becomes beautiful. And its more than poetic, it’s a melody that sings over my life, in darkness and light; calm and storm.

"And on the road to beautiful...my seasons always changeBut my life is spent on loving You. To know You in Your power and pain." -Charlie Hall