Drinking Beauty
God paints on a large canvas. His creativity is seen in the grandeur of the mountains, in the wildflowers on a rolling hillside, in classic masterpieces in an art gallery, or in the curious expression on the face of a child. Beauty is all around us. But seeing it means that we look up from our cell phones long enough to notice God’s intentional design. God’s brushstrokes of beauty are everywhere. Is it any wonder that God, Himself is called beautiful? Maybe it’s time to get your life back by drinking deeply of the beauty that should never be ignored.
Even though the world is broken, it is still filled with beauty. Where have you seen beauty throughout your world?
Read Psalm 27:4. In what sense is God beautiful? What prevents you from freely referring to God as being beautiful?
If God is beautiful, then it makes sense that His beauty would be reflected in the world around us. What does Romans 1:20 tell us about God and His creation? How has God revealed Himself in creation?
John Eldredge notes that, “Beauty is one of the richest graces God has provided to heal our souls and absorb his goodness.” How is that statement experienced in your life?
How does beauty help you battle the chaos all around you? What special reminders of beauty have you placed around you at work or in your home? How does beauty help give you peace in your inner world?
More Resources
The Simple Daily Things
Too often we look for God in the extraordinary when all the while, He makes His home in the ordinary. God is not that hard to find, especially if we’re looking for Him. Maybe we can get our lives back by inviting Jesus into our everyday routine of life. Pay close...
The Hidden Life of God in You
Does it ever feel like you’re just going through the motions in your faith? You go to church, pray, read the Bible, but you don’t feel a deep connection with God. Instead, you feel a nagging absence as if He’s hiding away somewhere. The good news is God is closer than...
Believe
Faith is far more than a feeling. Just because we don’t feel the presence of God doesn’t mean He isn’t there. We are often misled by our emotions, feelings, and circumstances. But choosing to believe in the power and presence of God is a choice. We must make that...
The Gifts of Memory
Time for us travels in only one direction, such that once a moment is past it’s gone forever. While this helps us deal with life’s challenges (“time heals all wounds”) we can also experience a strong sense of loss and even grief as we pass through the joyous times of...
Caring for the Neglected Places in Your Soul
One of the age old practices in our culture is that of presenting who we are as our vocation. We present our occupation title as a means to inform our new acquaintance of our function. In essence, we unknowingly begin to associate our vocations or contribution to...
Surrendering the Self Life
Over time, almost imperceptibly, we can get stuck in the trance of constructing our role in the world, building our identity, and completely miss what God is doing around us. We can spend a lot of time and energy protecting this Self we’ve created at all costs. As...
Remembering Who You Love
The twists and turns of life can sometimes feel like an assault on our confidence that God is good. Doubts can begin to surface, directing our attention away from God and negatively impacting our relationships with Jesus Christ and others. In these instances, we must...
Allowing for Transitions
Doesn’t it seem like the space between “what was” and “what’s next” makes us uncomfortable? Maybe that’s the reason we fill every empty or quiet moment with noise and activity—a glance at our phone between conversations, checking email between appointments, aimless...
Get Outside
Here’s a disturbing reality: we spend most of our lives indoors. We were meant for more than a plastic world with artificial light and re-breathed air. God can be found anywhere. But something special happens when we encounter God outside. Nature has the power to calm...
Kindness Toward Ourselves
There is often enormous pressure to keep up with the non-stop noise and activity of our modern world. Jesus offers us an alternative to this frantic pace but following Him and resisting the pressure around us will require a simple act: kindness toward ourselves. Is...
Simple Unplugging
Our immediate access to people and information through the use of technology has become a prevailing cultural norm. What has become the normal daily consumption of input can have a numbing effect on our soul and lead to our faith gradually growing thinner and thinner...
Pausing to Detach
So much about the pace of life conspires against us. We might even be convinced that the faster we go and the busier we become, the more we’ll get done. But what does that kind of toxicity do to our souls? Could it be that God invites us to find Him through a...