beauty{full}: worship

I'm pretty sure I fell asleep while waiting for the Little Man to conk out (my phone died so I couldn't mindlessly scroll through Pinterest to keep myself from succumbing to the soothing sounds of the humidifier, fan, and noise machine), and then I discovered an earwig in my washing machine. With the sheets that I'm still trying to get clean so I can go to bed. And yes, the exterminator is coming next week. So let's do some laundry, make a cup of tea (decaf!), and talk for a bit. Really, I have no choice but to drink tea and write since my sheets are still in the dryer!

This evening my oldest sister (the one with the three wonderfully precocious children and the affinity for pink) wrote to me: "I think we are made to long for beauty. It points to the perfection that once was and can be again through Christ." And I thought that she must be reading my notes because that was exactly what I was coming to talk about tonight. Also, can you tell that she's a writer too?

You see, the thing is that beauty for beauty's sake is a waste of my time. And a waste of your time, for that matter. We can spend our days seeking out the lovely, the dazzling, and the pleasing, and come away completely empty yet again. It is only when beauty points us towards God, the original artist, the consummate creator, the one through whom all things are made whole and beautiful once again, do we find what we are truly looking for.

While we are a part of this world we will have to train our eyes (and our minds!) in order to participate in selective viewing. But the Bible tells us that when we arrive in Heaven and when Christ's kingdom comes on earth, all things will be transformed in the light of who God is. There is no ugliness in Him. No darkness (though somehow I don't think this precludes the silken softness of night). No pain. No suffering. When we are there, dwelling with Him in that blinding perfection, there will be no question of the beauty that surrounds us and flows out of us in response to His glory.

But in the meantime, what do we do? While still a part of a fallen world, how do we determine true beauty from mere imitation (substance beauty from surface beauty, if you will)? I love the line of the song that says, "He makes all things beautiful in his time", but while God is taking his time (and truthfully, when a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day, how can we not feel that sometimes He is taking a very long time), how can we seek the beauty that may not have come fully to fruition yet?

We ask ourselves this very simple question: does this experience help me worship God more fully?

And we go from there. True beauty will always, always, always point us back to Christ, to the scars on his hands and feet, to the incredible grace that He has lavished on us. So it doesn't matter if we are discovering beauty in a simple sunrise or a sublime symphony, if it points us back to Jesus, then we know that it is real. And we know that we have found what we are really looking for: Christ, the one who is truly full of beauty.

{If you're looking for the rest of this series, all the links can be found here. Thank you so much for joining with me this month.}