A lover of the Beautiful

"The Author of all beauty,

Himself a lover of the beautiful,

God provided to gratify

in His children

the love of beauty."

Ellen White, Education, p. 41

I am thinking about God this morning. The Bible says we were created in His image, like him. He created us. He made all beauty. He himself is "a lover of the beautiful.' And He created in us, his children, "the love of beauty."

I have found in my own experience that when I see beauty, something stirs in me, comes alive. My eye knows when it sees something that reflects the home I was meant to live in, Eden the original garden home. Visual beauty in nature seems to be the pinnacle of beauty on earth, because it is the descendant of the original beauty. Human made beauty can catch the eye, but can fall short of those things that are alive. I haven't seen this Eden home of my ancestors, but somewhere deep in my DNA is a longing to be there.

I took a walk this weekend out through the savannah of Guam overlooking the sea, and found that people had brought out their broken and damaged belongings and dumped them randomly throughout the landscape. Think of a photograph of a sunset view with a broken refrigerator in the foreground, or an old mattress in the foreground. The carelessness of these people is upsetting. But the trash does not diminish the beauty created by God or stop the sun from splashing transparent color across the evening sky. The wild orchids still spring up among the rusting heaps, speaking loudly of the loving character of God to those who pause to see and listen.

Could it be, that the more we allow God to live in us, the more that this love of His beauty comes alive in us?

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