Our family just returned from three days on Beaver Lake in Arkansas.
Our vacation coincided with a spectacular seasonal display. The trees in the Ozarks were aflame with autumn color; scarlet and vivid orange and gold hues lit up the whole landscape.
Our cabin was secluded enough that wildlife abounded. A deer parade from woods to water and back punctuated each day at dawn and dusk. In the middle of one sunny afternoon, the girls goggled as an armadillo ambled unhurriedly from lawn to wilderness. Once we spotted a raptor circling; another time, it was a great egret soaring up from the lake, dripping water diamonds as he flew.
Perhaps most startlingly beautiful for this family of suburbanites: the night sky, unpolluted by any artificial light whatsoever, deeply velvet black and lavishly strewn with fiercely bright stars whose brilliance dazzled us.
My Mathematical Insight:
Being away from things people make (cars, houses, stores, noise)
+
being surrounded by things God makes (trees, water, skies, animals)
=
a profound new gratitude for God as Creator.
I didn’t know how much I needed to rediscover that flavor of gratitude, but the satisfaction and peace it brought felt like soul healing.
Words from the psalms rushed, unbidden, into my mind:
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
(Psalm 42:1 – 2)
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
4 yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
(Psalm 19:1 – 4)
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
(Psalm 8:3 – 4)
God as Creator of everything beautiful – God as Creator of beauty itself – that is a beginning point I literally lose sight of in the hustle and bustle of ordinary life. But it matters. It matters so much!
Why?
Because God IS our Creator. Because God made us, and the world, on purpose. Because God called what He made “good” – and humankind “very good” – and because we are made in God’s image and therefore, like God, we delight both in making things and in beauty.
Because when we are being true to ourselves, true to the God-image that is the foundation of human identity, we instinctively create beauty that reflects and rejoices in the beauty God has already made.
And because the inverse is also inevitable: when we turn away from God, we shut down our own creative capacity and we forfeit the ability to make – or even to accurately perceive – beauty. Test this precept for yourself. Look at ugliness (architectural, verbal, philosophical, etc.) and then measure it against the standard of God’s truth.
The apostle Paul articulates this truth / beauty / God continuum in various writings.
For example, he re-words his instructions to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” by spelling out the following: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4:8)
And Paul assures his readers that whatever we make during our lives on earth will be judged based on the standards of heaven:
“10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done.”
(1 Corinthians 3:10 – 13)
Our family visited Crystal Bridges Museum while we were in Arkansas, and the beauty on display there brought home the divine capacity of human creativity in no uncertain terms! Notice the way that the beauty hanging on the walls and standing on the grounds of Crystal Bridges interprets and glorifies the beauty of God’s Creation… the sculptural metal tree whose twisted branches mimic the branches of the red and gold masterpiece; the moonscape that imitates the actual night sky… Human artists investing human genius in the holy task of making beauty, like God.
Coming home after such sumptuous visual feasting has been a little like the day after Thanksgiving dinner… there is still digesting to be done! But I am convicted that remembering God as Creator, and honoring God’s image within myself and others, may be the key to living well through this present ugliness. God’s sovereignty over Creation is an absolute sovereignty with no parallel. There is no election, no pandemic, no nation-against-nation conflict that can measure up to God’s authority. Everything (and everyone) in Creation is limited and temporary; the Creator is infinite and eternal.
And when I despair at the “state of the world,” when my flesh feels its frailty and the headlines declare chaos, I need to recall that in Christ, God is not just Creator – God is RE-Creator. In Christ, God comes to remake via redemption everything and everyone that has been corrupted and broken beyond earthly repair.
The Book of Revelation describes this penultimate re-Creative act as follows:
“22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.”
(Revelation 21:22)
And Jesus, our Creator and our Re-Creator, promises that redemption is not resuscitation. Redemption is resurrection – rebirth as Christ’s own – beauty from ashes, forever and ever, Amen.
