Finding True Beauty
What is beauty? Is it truly found in the eye of the beholder or is it something greater?
Some of us believe that true beauty can be found in nature. Others think it can be found elsewhere, like in a piece of art, the face a person or even a car. Modern culture trumpets the phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Most people don’t realize that phrase is only a myth about beauty and is not a classical view of beauty at all. The Greeks saw beauty as symmetry, order, balance, unity and proportion. Another classical view of beauty from The Middle Ages and The Renascence is a mathematical formula known as the Fibonacci sequence or the divine portion. Beauty and math together? Seriously? Yes!
When God created He created with beauty. The beauty we find in nature is a reflection of His beauty
If we want to know what brings forth true beauty we need to start with order and order starts with God. God created all things with order and purpose. He is a God of order. Beauty is part of life. As the author of life God is the source of all things beautiful. He alone is true and pure beauty. Psalm 27:4 and many other places in the Bible tells us God is beautiful.
A Beautiful God
The great American theologian Jonathan Edwards described God as being “the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty”. Psalm 50:1-2 says, “The Mighty One, God, the Lord, has spoken, and summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shone forth.” Psalm 50: 1-2 NASB
If God is beautiful, then real beauty is something way beyond what we see with our eyes. God does not posses a physical body, therefore He does not posses physical beauty. In the end, beauty transcends the physical. When we see beauty with our eyes, it is just a representation or mere shadow of what beauty is truly like. God is the ultimate example of beauty.
In the season of fall we get glimpse of God’s glory and beauty, such as with these blueberry leave.
Creation gives us countless glimpses of God’s beauty. A new fallen snow, a majestic mountain, the season of fall, the beauty and grace of a bird. Nature gives us tiny windows into the beauty and glory of God. Its beauty tells us of His greater unseen beauty and points us to Him.
As for us, people, God’s crowning creation, whom He made in His image (Genesis 1:28), our most important beauty comes from within. We get so caught up with the shadow of outer beauty, when we really need to get caught up with the inner beauty. That is where our true beauty lies. Seek that, display that, live that! Don’t seek what the world calls beautiful. Seek the greater beauty.
