The beautiful can have but one source… God.
~Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
One thing have I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to inquire in his temple.
…
Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud;
be gracious to me and answer me!
You have said, “Seek my face.”My heart says to you,
“Your face, LORD, do I seek.”
…
I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living!
~ From Psalm 27
in the land of the living!
~ From Psalm 27
Oh surely this is true,
Beauty is God’s handwriting—a wayside sacrament.
Welcome it in every fair face,
in every fair sky,
in every fair flower,
and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
It seems to me this is why the devil would hijack beauty and twist it in our world to be fuel to feed the lusts of our flesh. We are designed to perceive the symmetry and shading and contrast and proportion that combines to light up our minds. All these things work together to bring an understanding of the gorgeous tapestry of time, talent, form and purpose that stand before us. We are suddenly aware as all of these aspects present-themselves-all-at-once as: beauty.
In my habit of deferring to experts, it seems that Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89), in ‘As Kingfishers Catch fire, Dragonflies Dráw Fláme’, may be touching just at the event horizon of what beauty might actually be
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
Can we see it? Christ has defined beauty for the true believer.
It’s you.
Yeah, this is how He now sees you.
You’re beautiful from head to toe, my dear love,
beautiful beyond compare, absolutely flawless.
~ From Song of Solomon 4
~ From Song of Solomon 4
And, Paul, in 1 Corinthians (Oh-by-the-way, everywhere else too) makes it clear that we are no longer our old selves. We are a new creation in Christ – utterly one with Him. This is an incredible thing. As we surrender our selves to Him, He pours His beauty into and through us.
We take on a form that begins to show the symmetry, shading, contrast, proportion, talent, and purpose we were ever designed to have. We are – in fact – beautiful. Not just to Him, but to the world.
Some are repulsed. This is not the forum to discuss why. We just know it to be true.
But many are attracted to this new beautiful creature; this new lovely in limb and lovely in eyes being that joyfully flows along the river of His will.
So, yeah, surely the evil one wants to hijack the whole thing about beauty. The created angel Lucifer knows what it was like to be beautiful as he was created to show forth, in light, an example of this aspect of the goodness and beauty of Almighty G_d. So, this fallen cosmos we indwell – and its prince, will use beauty to nudge (or hammer) our fleshy desires, and turn us away from the only real Source of beauty in the first place.
These moments will come… and we will be tempted to pretend that we are just appreciating beauty. But we know it is not true. And even where there is beauty before us, it is just so important to remember that He (and even the folds of His robe) are indeed more beautiful than the curves of her skin, or the color of that money, or the lines of that machine.
We learn – by His Grace – that we just plain want Him more than all that other stuff. We begin, as brother Hopkins says above, to act in G_d’s eye what in G_d’s eye we are…
Beautiful.
God’s fingers can touch nothing but to mould it into loveliness.
~ George Macdonald (1824-1905)
