Beauty is Essential For Our Life

Let's not forget, in these days of an overabundance of ugly and fear, let's seek out something beautiful.  We were created to view beauty.  We need it.  We crave it.  Did you every wonder why?

"That we even need to explain how beauty is so absolutely essential to God only shows how dull we have grown to him, to the world in which we live, and to Eve, [the first woman, made in the image of God.]  Our own spiritual lives are lived with barely a nod to beauty, to the central role that beauty plays in the life of God, and in our own lives.  We hold to the importance of truth and goodness.  We skip right over the importance of beauty when trying to know God."

"Beauty is the essence of God.  The first way we know this is through nature, the world God has given us.  Scripture says that the created world is filled with the glory of God.[Isa. 6:3]  In what way?  Primarily through its beauty.  Nature is not primarily functional.  It is primarily beautiful."

"We are so used to evaluating everything and everyone by their usefulness that this thought will take a minute or two to begin to dawn on us.  Nature is not primarily functional.  It is primarily beautiful.  Which is to say, beauty is in and of itself a great and glorious good, something we need in large and daily doses [for our God has seen fit to arrange for this].  Nature at the height of its glory shouts, Beauty is Essential! revealing that Beauty is the essence of God.  The whole world is full of his glory."

"Next, there are the visions given to John, who was taken in the Spirit to behold God.  As we can only imagine, he finds it hard to put into words what he saw and tried to find things that were like it that he knew."

"The one sitting on the throne was as brilliant as gemstones--jasper and carnelian.  And the glow of an emerald circled his throne like a rainbow...In front of the throne was a shiny sea of glass, sparkling like crystal." Revelations 4:3,6

"Is there any doubt that the God John beheld was beautiful beyond description?  But of course.  God must be even more glorious than this glorious creation, for it foretells or displays the glory that is God's." Excerpt taken from Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge

So, seek out something beautiful today.  Your self needs it, just as it needs the other essentials of life.

Start with the bursting spring of nature around you.  Then, soon, you will start to see the beauty in the things near you that you have overlooked.  The small things.  Tears.  Laughter.  The essence of God.