Sunday Alphabet - B

On this second week in my Sunday Alphabet praise series, B is for....beauty!

Breathtaking beauty surrounds us in Creation.

The Creator God is ablaze in beauty...and so is this universe He created, from the furthest sparkling galaxy all the way down to the ground beneath our feet, and even deeper still to the buried, hidden beauty of gemstones that no one may ever see.

I have asked one thing from the LORD;
it is what I desire;
to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
gazing on the beauty of the LORD
and seeking Him in His temple.

So said King David ~ Psalm 27:4

Here is a word about beauty from Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy (pp. 323-4):

To smell a rose you must get close, you must linger. When we do so, we delight in it. We love it. Taking time to smell the roses leaves enduring impressions of a dear glory that, if sufficiently reengaged, can change the quality of our entire life. The rose in a very special way–and more generally the flower, even in its most humble forms—is a fragile but irrepressible witness on earth to a "larger" world where good is somehow safe. This simple illustration contains profound truths. If anyone is to love God and have his or her life filled with that love, God in his glorious reality must be brought before the mind and kept there in such a way that the mind takes root and stays fixed there.

So consider the beauty all around us...linger, breath in the fragrance, be delighted by the color, and remember who created it...the stars, the sea, the rising sun, the power of a hurricane or the gentlest of breezes on a warm day...as awe inspiring as these may be to us, they are only the tiniest fraction of the great beauty and power of the God who created it all and who sustains life everywhere.

The "'larger' world where good is somehow safe" Dallas Willard is referring to above is the Kingdom Among Us. As Paul said in Acts 17:27-28 to the Athenians ... He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being. The Kingdom of God is as close to us as our own skins! It is available and accessible to any who chose to follow the Way of Jesus. This is a continuing theme in The Divine Conspiracy.