God's Beauty.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil--this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that we will revere him.

Ecclesiastes 3:11-14

When my professor asked our Art Appreciation class "What is art?" there were a lot of various answers. My immediate response was "everything". We were mainly discussing paintings and sculptures in class, and my philosophy is that anything can be art--it doesn't have to be beautiful and it doesn't have to make sense. What matters is that someone felt an urge to express something, or tell a story or make a statement. During my quiet time today I started thinking deeply about it. As I was sitting on a bench looking out at the New River, I thanked God for His beauty. It is all around us. Beauty is most evident in the aesthetic way, but it mostly resides in people. How we treat other people, how we view God's world, how we listen and help those in need, etc.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

The more time we spend with our Lord, the more of His beauty we will see. I'm often reminded of His beauty in moments like I had today. I decided to get out of my apartment and to sit by the river. Once I got there, I thought I had made a mistake. It was too hot, there were tons of people around, and bugs were flying all around me. I read some of His word and intended to leave when I looked out in front of me. I just stared in awe at the river and the trees surrounding it. I was calmed by the sound of the water flowing and the leaves blowing. It was at that moment that I started having a silent conversation with Jesus. I was thanking Him for reminding me of His beauty and asking Him so desperately to never let me forget it. During this time it started getting more breezy, the bugs moved elsewhere, and the people passing by were no longer a distraction. Near the end of my prayer I heard a soft rumble of thunder. This, to me, was God's way of letting me know that He was listening to me and He was responding. While there are some not so beautiful things in the world and there are so many things that we don't understand; I think they just help us see and appreciate the beauty around us that much more. For example: the Crucifixion of Christ. It was brutal, ugly, painful. But He suffered for us. And He resurrected! He carried our sin, our pain, our mistakes, our disobedience; and died for us. And not only that, but he rose for us! He gave us hope and love. There is no other beauty than that of Christ.

"I see you there hanging on a tree
You bled and then you died and then you rose again for me
Now you are sitting on Your heavenly throne
Soon we will be coming home
You’re beautiful, you're beautiful" -Phil Wickham

So what is art? E.H. Gombrich, a non-religious art historian said "There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists." While E.H. Gombrich was not a Christian, his statement was more accurate than originally intended. God is the ultimate Artist. He is our Creator, afterall! We are his art. And to be like Him we must also be "artists" and use whatever spiritual gifts He gave us to show His beauty, love, and grace to others. The results are not only more "art", but a life with Him. We will mess up sometimes, and those are the ugly parts. Others will make mistakes and they won't make sense to us. But ultimately our Father created EVERYTHING. And He is beautiful and everything He makes is beautiful.

So my prayer for us is this:

One thing I ask of the LORD,

this is what I seek:

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 seek him in his temple. 

Psalm 27:4

 

 

God's Love.

These past couple of months I've been trying to understand things--going through a phase I guess. And one thing I've continually prayed for is for me to feel loved and to show love to others. I'm a quiet person at first and I really want to reach out to more people. To have community. So I've been praying for boldness and love. But during this phase I've been really hard on myself. I realized I needed to step up. And I also realized that I wasn't receiving love from anyone else. What helped me realize all of this was Blue Like Jazz. Donald Miller said "God's love will never change us if we don't accept it." And it's true. I've been longing to change but it never seemed to happen. I don't always accept love from other people nor from God.
A big part of accepting God's love is to accept myself for who I am. All of me. I feel that women continually compare themselves to others--wishing they had their hair, their body, their brains, talent, confidence, personality, faith...it gets EXHAUSTING. And often I, and many others, feel that so-and-so is better because so-and-so is this-or-that. This is distorted thinking.
"For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7

 Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. -1 Peter 3:3-4

"The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we are comparing our behind the scenes to everyone else's highlight reel" - S. Furtick

The reason I feel the need to write about this is because this is something that I, and the rest of the world, struggle with the most in life. It's something that I have been praying over for a long time, and now all of a sudden I keep finding these words from God and others on the same subject. God loves us so deeply. We are ALL beautiful. We live in such a broken society that focuses too much on the importance of outward appearance. It's nearly impossible to live in this country, as a woman, and to not have any insecurities. I've grown up seeing women on TV and feeling like I could never look like that. And now I constantly feel the need to wear make-up wherever I go. Most women do. We don't feel pretty unless we are covering our natural beauty and also our insecurities. It's sad. Our world is so broken.
Type in "natural beauty" on Google and the first thing that pops up is an article called "15 Ways to be a Natural Beauty"...really? We are all already naturally beautiful. Yet I am so broken in this area that I actually read through the article to figure it out for myself. The point I'm trying to make is that each of us are beautiful in our own ways. God made us each individually and gave us talents to use for His Glory. If you don't believe me, check out Psalm 139. We must not only accept ourselves for who we are, but also lift each other up in fellowship and community. "Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God." Romans 15:7
My prayer for all of us is to love ourselves, each other, and most importantly our Father. And to also allow ourselves to be freed from numbness so we can feel the love that others and God have for us.

"How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures." Psalm 104:24