Appreciating the Stunning Beauty of Creation

Tourists ride "The Maid of the Mist" to see
Niagara Falls as closely as possible.

With all the ugliness and evil we see in the world, sometimes it’s easy to forget how much beauty surrounds us. Caught up in negativity, we fail to “stop and smell the roses,” as the time-honored admonition tells us to do. When was the last time you made a point of admiring and enjoying beauty in any of its many forms? 

Art – whether it’s considered beautiful or not – is largely determined by who’s looking at it. We can stare at a painting, no matter if it’s been created with oil paint, watercolors or some other medium, and some of us will marvel at the artist’s skill and creativity; others will shrug or even sneer, wondering what the artist could have been thinking. 

 

We can have similar reactions to sculptures. Most folks will agree that two of Michelangelo’s best known creations, “David” and “Pieta,” are true works of art. However, when we see sculptures consisting of twisted metal or seemingly random plastic, many of us aren’t so convinced. Beauty truly is in the eyes of the beholder.

 

The same applies to music, literature, theatrical films, and many other art forms. I’ve heard many pieces of music, both vocal and instrumental, that thrilled me to my core while others, highly regarded by other people, elicit a mere “Meh” from me. One person’s wonderful melody is another’s cacophony.

 

If we were to ask each other what books and films made the strongest impressions on us, we’d probably offer widely differing opinions. But that’s one of the great things about life. We’re all unique, not only in physical appearance and abilities, but also in our interests and preferences.

 

Many natural wonders, however, tend to evoke more commonly shared responses. I’ve visited the Grand Canyon twice, and both times found myself slack-jawed and speechless. I doubt there’s anyone who has seen it in person that wasn’t awestruck to some degree. I never tire of observing glorious sunrises and sunsets, especially while at the beach. My cameras might tire of taking photos of those sights, but I don’t.

 

Recently, my wife and I joined a bus tour to Niagara Falls, another impressive natural wonder. Being told about more than 3,000 tons of water crashing over the Falls every second is nothing compared to seeing it happening firsthand. Put in other terms, this is 75,750 gallons of water per second over the American and Bridal Veil Falls, and 681,750 gallons over the Horseshoe Falls. (No, the thought of taking the plunge in a barrel never crossed my mind.)

 

The best thing about appreciating the wonders of nature, whether it’s a perfectly formed flower or the splendor of countless stars viewed from a site far from the glare of city lights, is knowing who created them. Psalm 8:1-3 declares, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory above the heavens…Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place.”

 

Many scientists would respond that all we see on the earth, under the earth and far above the earth isn’t the work of God, but the results of time and random chance. Increasingly, however, although not widely reported, credible and credentialed scientists are challenging the assumptions that support the denial of intelligent design or creation, while also casting doubt on similar presuppositions used to justify much evolutionary thinking. This is why passages like those in Psalm 8, along with the Creation account in the opening chapters of Genesis, are all the more astounding.

 

For instance, one wouldn’t look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Great Wall of China, or the Great Pyramids of Egypt and conclude, “What a marvel of time and random chance!” We know without questioning that they all were conceived, designed and built by creative, industrious minds. How much more the unfathomable wonders of nature that were fine-tuned so exquisitely by our Creator God?

 

There is one other example from creation I haven’t mentioned that’s even more wondrous: Human beings. After writing, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place,” the psalmist continued with awe, “what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of Your hands; You put everything under his feet” (Psalm 8:3-6). Which prompts the writer in verse 9 to repeat, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!”

 

When we decide to slow down long enough to appreciate all the beauty that surrounds us, not to mention the incredible complexity with which each one of us is made and can exist, I wonder how a fair-minded person cannot be stirred and moved to affirm, “O Lord…how majestic is Your name in all the earth”?

Canyons, Conceptions – and Cocoons

Imagine all that was involved in forming the Grand Canyon.

Have you ever seen one of those gossip magazines at the grocery store with a cover photo of a beautiful actress, except she’s not wearing any makeup? Who knew so much work went into making someone look gorgeous! 

Beauty, of course, isn’t restricted to the realms of Hollywood. We find it all around us: spectacular sunrises or sunsets; scenery right after a snowfall; the pallet of colorful leaves in the autumn, or another of nature’s myriad wonders. We have manmade beauty: inspiring works of art; stirring  and complex musical compositions; a poem that grabs hold of the heart, or a stunning work of architecture. 

Occasionally, as I’ve written before, I even encounter something that seems truly deserving of the term, “Awesome!” But to my shame, rarely do I feel appropriate appreciation for all that was involved in bringing about that awesomeness. 

This exquisite porcelain creation in
Herend, Hungary took many hours
of painstaking artistry.

Take the Grand Canyon, for example, or other wondrous vistas around the world, even if they don’t quite match the famed Arizona landmark’s grandeur. We can’t begin to conceive the factors and forces that combined to create them. Years ago I visited Herend, Hungary, where I viewed exhibits of rare and exquisite porcelain and china treasured by collectors around the world. Painstaking artistry has gone into creating those pieces, some dating back to the 1800s, but we see only the finished product.

When we admire paintings or sculptures from art’s grand masters, we hardly fathom what went into each work’s conception or the years of preparation that led up to its execution. We can enjoy compositions by Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Chopin and many others, but can we fully comprehend the inspiration – and perspiration – expended to complete such majestic works?

Even the simplest things manage to escape my understanding. As the late author and poet Maya Angelou wrote, “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”

As a butterfly flits from flower to flower, do we stop to ponder its prior journey from caterpillar to cocoon – the struggle it endured before arriving at such delicate beauty? There’s perhaps no more compelling symbol of rebirth in nature.

This leads me to consider the even more profound phenomenon of spiritual rebirth. Jesus told Nicodemus, the Jewish leader, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3). Then, for emphasis, Jesus restated, “You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:7-8).

One way of understanding this powerful declaration is that becoming a part of God’s eternal family doesn’t involve making improvements – it requires total transformation, far more wondrous than what butterflies go through. As 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 

Most often, however, this “instant” transformation has been a long time in the making. In my case, even though I had an intellectual belief in God, it took more than 30 years before I was willing to embrace Jesus Christ as both Savior and Lord. And yet, that was just the beginning. Ever since, God has been to work in and through my life, continuing to mold and shape me into the person He desires for me to be. I have been engaging, sometimes unwittingly or even unwillingly, in what Philippians 2:12 describes as, “working out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” In other words, discovering how to work out what God has already worked in.

In terms of “beauty,” the Christian life is a bit of a mixed bag. At times we might strike others as splendid new creations, but at other times we slip back into the old forms of our past life, almost as if a butterfly could slip back to being a caterpillar. Maybe God should slap a sign on our backs reading, “Work in Progress.”

The good news about the Good News is that, indeed, God isn’t finished with us even after we become “born again.” As Philippians 1:6 affirms, “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

At that moment we will realize the fulfillment of the assurance given to us in 1 John 3:2, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Perhaps then, more than ever, we’ll appreciate all the work that’s required to create a thing of true beauty.

When Unity Doesn’t Mean Uniformity

Overcoming the vast divide afflicting our nation today seems
as difficult as leaping the Grand Canyon in a single bound.

A blogger friend of mine recently addressed the subject of unity. This got me to thinking: Our nation is called the United States of America, but in some ways it seems we’ve never been more divided. Perhaps – and I tread gently as I say this – even more divided than during the days leading up to and during the Civil War.

Politics, an arena in which compromise and negotiation once seemed possible and desirable, has become divided to such an extreme the only common ground is agreement that “never the twain shall meet.” Achieving “middle ground” appears as realistic as crossing the chasm between the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon with a pogo stick.

Ideologies concerning gender, socio-economics, beliefs, lifestyles and even race despite progress we’ve celebrated since the 1960s, seem just as severely separated. Other divisions currently afflicting our once proudly United States come to mind. Perhaps national spell-check got confused and switched the spelling to “untied.”

Without intending to sound simplistic, one factor in these growing disunions could be confusion between unity and uniformity. The differences are considerable.

I remember back in the ‘60s – yes, I’m old enough to recollect them. Those were days when the hippie generation and young people across the country were attempting to display unity by length of hair, clothes they wore (and didn’t wear), the music they listened to, and the vocabulary they spoke. But as they conformed to their unique brand of non-conformity, what they really demonstrated was not unity but uniformity.

Bell-bottom pants, tie-dyed shirts, determination to be “out of sight” (which morphed into “far out”), espousing the virtues of free sex, the pressure to “turn on and tune out,” along with a resolve to “question authority,” had many of us marching in the lockstep of uniformity for a time. Conformed to a singular image of non-conformity, but united? Not really. For the most part, everyone was just looking out for themselves in the comfort of a crowd.

Seeds of that era have spawned current versions of uniformity (political correctness) and disunity (intolerance of anyone holding a view contrary to your own opinions and ideology).

Maybe it would be good to grasp the differences between uniformity and unity, recognizing that while a house divided against itself cannot stand, as Jesus stated in Mark 3:25, all the parts of the house don’t need to be identical.

It’s amazing how, in one way or another, the Bible talks about unity and its importance. It presents unity in terms of teamwork: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17) and “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work…. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9,12).

When God created man and woman, He did so to provide unity and a complement for the other. Uniformity obviously was not the goal. As the French saying goes, “Vive la difference”!

And writing to believers in the ancient city of Philippi, the apostle Paul placed great emphasis on unity. “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his hope, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing from selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:1-4).

That’s an intriguing definition of what unity should look like. At the same time, Paul made clear this unity did not require uniformity. In fact, uniformity would have impeded unity. He wrote, using the metaphor of the human body to describe the Church, “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts, and though all its parts are many, they form one body…. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).

So how can we once again become united in the midst of diversity, truly United States without having to become Uniform States?   As the apostle wrote above, stop focusing on our own interests, cultivate true humility, and strive to become one in spirit and purpose. Emphasize the common bonds that can unite us rather than the differences that can divide us.

Hardly a complete solution, but it could be a great start.