Stoned-Campbell Disciple

(I wrote this in 2014. A challenging year.)

Easter sabbatical observations. Today was a beautiful Lord’s Day. A beautiful Easter Day.

From my backyard, I watched the Sun rise over the Rincons this morning and was in awe of the beauty of the new dawn. I went to the Gathering and was taken in by the singing of “O Glorious Day.” I talked to my daughters and was delighted by their beauty.

I am sitting by the pool gazing up at Mars, the stars and the night sky. They are imbued with beauty. I am captivated by it.

Questions flood my mind in light this beauty.

Why do humans love beauty?
Why do we value it?
Why is there beauty in the first place?
Why do we humans create and attempt to surround ourselves with things that have the aroma of beauty?

Beauty, like pleasure, is not an evolutionary necessity. Think about that. As far back as we can find traces of humanity we also find creations of beauty … works of art. Why would hunter/gatherers with a life on the margins of starvation paint magnificent works in the caves of Lascaux 30,000 years ago?

Why did these ancient people have a desire and appreciation for beauty? Why do we find Orion and flowers beautiful? Bees don’t! Why do we strive to recreate that beauty and value it highly?

Does not Easter give us a clue?? What if beauty, that reality that isn’t a necessity of evolution, is the manifestation of the divine in our world?

What if beauty is simply the goodness of God breaking into this fallen, but still good, world that was created to be beautiful? What if humans are simply imaging God with the impulse to create works of art?

God the beautiful artist places God’s own beauty in the world and humans mimic God when we do the same. Easter tells us that the beauty in the world is not by accident … it is both the echo of the Garden and a sign of world that is breaking in because of the Resurrection.

Humans appreciate beauty because of God. Humans create beauty because of God. Beauty is a sign of redemption. Beauty draws us because God is the very essence of Beauty.

“One thing I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
and to BEHOLD THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD,
and to inquire in his temple”
(Psalm 27.4).

Just some Easter sabbath musings I thought I would share. Think about beauty and how profound it really is that you can appreciate it.

Shalom.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 20th, 2024 at 7:13 am and is filed under Christian hope, Easter, resurrection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.