Wednesday, January 07, 2009

True beauty

Your eyes will see the King in His beauty and view a land that stretches afar (Isaiah 33:17).

When I was a teenager, we lived in a subdivision just outside of town. One side was bordered by a pasture, the other side was a bluff overlooking a stream. In between these borders, a paved road looped among groves of trees, and along either side of the lane were homes with carefully manicured lawns.

With one exception. One homeowner’s yard was very different. It had no grass. A split rail fence ran along the edge of the road; behind it were trees and rocks and wildflowers. There was no landscaping—the yard looked wild and untamed. Probably the entire subdivision had looked this way before being developed.

I liked that yard. I thought the variety of trees and plants were interesting. But the neighbors hated it. They hated the weed seeds blowing onto their lawns. They hated how this one yard looked so out of place among all the neat and smooth fields of grass that everyone else had. And maybe they were a little jealous of how easy such a yard was to maintain.

I have nothing against large green lawns—I think they look nice, and they make good playgrounds for the kids. But are they worth the work—seeding and weeding and fertilizing and cutting? Are they actually prettier than the landscape which God provides—trees and wildflowers and the occasional rock, arranged organically instead of being laid out on a grid?

We think that we know what is beautiful. But no palace has ever looked as magnificent as a sunset over sparkling water. No painting can adequately reproduce the vibrant colors of a butterfly sitting on a flower. No fashion model on a runway can rival the beauty of a baby’s smiling face. No human effort, no matter how artistic, can rival what God has done with the world as His palette.

So it is with Holy Scripture. The Bible is far more than a piece of beautiful literature; it is God’s own words offered to mankind, words that no human writer could hope to equal. The Word of God is magnificent, compelling and awe-inspiring, just like everything else of His design; to read it, really read it, is to see the most beautiful thing in God’s beautiful world.

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