Day 17: Beauty In The Word

I've been reading and studying the Bible since, I think I can safely say, before I was born. I'm confident that my parents read it to me and preached its truths to me whilst I was still in the womb. This is a great blessing for which I am and have always been very thankful, but it does mean that there are times in my life when I read parts of the Bible and simply see what I've always seen, and don't learn anything new. To combat that last year, I decided to study through the entire Bible focusing on one particular topic.  The topic of greatest interest to me was that of rest - how do you truly rest, what does it mean, how do we as Christians overwhelm and exhaust ourselves, and what does God have to say about it?  I bought the ESV Journaling Bible and began in Genesis noting everything I could see about rest.


This has been the most powerful and helpful experience I've had with God's Word in many years.  The journaling Bible has wide margins with room to write in - no longer do I have to squeeze my little notes in at the side, or fill countless scraps of paper that I lose, or create a complicated system of colours to note verses about this or that topic.  (I've done and still do all those things in my other Bibles.)  The best part is, when I've finished studying the whole Bible, I'll have an excellent reference book on what rest truly is, and I can begin again with another journaling Bible.

Well, as I said the experience was so good I couldn't wait to finish the first one.  And the second topic that I am the most passionate about is, as you've seen in this blog, beauty.  So I bought a second journaling Bible, for which to note what God has to say about beauty.  Where is it found? How do we seek it?  What can we learn from it?  I'm now in the midst of both Bibles - I'm focusing on the rest study still, but every once in a while I come across a verse or a chapter that really highlights beauty, and I switch over to the beauty Bible and jot down notes in that one.

One of my favourite verses in the Bible about beauty (so far) is from Psalm 96.  I like it best in the old Scottish metrical version of the Psalter, which I have come to know and love since living and worshiping in Scotland.  "Great honour is before His face, and majesty divine; strength is within His holy place, and there doth beauty shine."  There is so much richness in this one verse describing who God is!  Honour, majesty, strength, holiness, and beauty.  I love that beauty is left for last - it's the crowning glory of these characteristics of God in His temple.  He's not just amazing and powerful and strong and to be feared...He is beauty personified.  No one can encapsulate the kind of beauty that radiates out from God.  If you want to be blown away by it, read the book of Revelation.  Many people spend ages reading it and trying to figure out when God is coming or how He will come or what way He will take His people up to heaven with Him.  When I read it, I see two things: one is God's victory, and the other is His beauty.  The whole book is full of it.  Phrases like "His face was like the sun shining in full strength"..."Before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal"..."The earth was made bright with his glory"..."The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready"..."And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb."  Everything shines, and radiates, and sparkles, and glows, and shimmers, and is blindingly beautiful in the presence of God.  Anything that is not so perfectly beautiful cannot stand before Him.  It is breath-taking, awe-inspiring.  The kind of feeling you get when you're standing behind a waterfall, seeing the drops sparkle and glisten as they catch the light...or watching the sun set in a blaze of glory, lighting up the world as it descends.  The Grand Canyon, lit up with reds and oranges and yellows and colours you hardly knew existed.  A dark blue stormy sky, with shafts of light striking through the clouds and lighting up a small, dusty portion of desert.  When I see these things I just stand there for a moment, amazed. There are no words, and try as I might I can't seem to capture it with my camera lens.


That kind of beauty, the kind we see on earth that takes our breath away for a moment, will completely pale in comparison to Beauty personified in Jesus Christ, in heaven.  That's the kind of beauty I'm seeking to see in the pages of this journaling Bible.  And it's everywhere.

May you see God's beauty today.

Day 16: Our Best Impulses

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognise them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty...We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up to discover what is already there."  -Henry Miller

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook the other day and I've read and re-read it several times since then. It really resonated with me because every word is true in my life.  I have several books I want to write, a website to finish, thoughtful cards to make and send, walks to take, blog posts to write...and then I end up watching films or tv shows, chatting randomly to people on Facebook, reading articles, lying around, and coming to the end of the day having achieved no more than the day before in terms of the more major things of life.  And meanwhile books are being published and websites launched and businesses grown and I'm looking at them with envy, knowing full well that I could be doing the same. 

There is only one way to achieve great things, and that is by small steps.  The only things that have great results are the ones that have little starts, little middles, little ends.  It's now been weeks since I've blogged every day because I want to 'catch up'.  And so the days and the weeks go by, and I suddenly discover that my 90 day challenge is hanging loosely, uselessly while I achieve nothing in small spurts.

So today I'm starting here, from where I am.  I'm doing a few catch up posts, but it's time to just begin.  If I've learned anything from my previous challenges, it's that once you start to let the reins slip through your fingers, it's a great difficulty to get them back.  Imagine you are the driver of an old-fashioned carriage, holding the reins as the horses take you where you want to go.  You can plod along for hours holding those reins loosely, every once in a while pulling back sharply or turning slightly to the left or right; but whether through boredom or weariness you set the reins on your lap, and then let them slide away, the horses are going to wander off their own direction, and you'll be left with nothing but a beautiful carriage that is not going anywhere, and a long walk with great effort to get the horses back.

Today I am getting the horses back.  I have to leave the carriage by the side of the road and go walking for hours to find them.  Once found, I have to persuade them to return. Then hook them up to the reins and the carriage again, and get back in the driver's seat.  It's a long and weary process and it's very tempting to just throw up my hands, leave the horses and carriage in their respective places, and just walk on to I don't know where.  But there's no achievement or accomplishment in that.  Everyone else in the world is doing that, and they're bored and tired and frustrated, many of them.  So I'm not going to think extra hard about it - I'm just going to write a few past blog posts, go for my walk, and post these all.  Then, tomorrow, I'll start fresh and write no matter how I feel, and walk no matter how I feel.  But I think I'll hold the reins a little tighter this time.

Day 15: Getting Lost In The Beauty

Today we went to the performance of Les Miserables in London's west end.  It was absolutely incredible. I'd say there are hardly words, but since this is a blog and I'm a writer, I think there are words. I'm going to search for them, and do the best I can to display to you the awesome power, the intensity, the feeling - but as with most amazing things of this nature, I highly recommend you get on the next flight to London and experience it yourself.

One of the things I appreciate the most about going to a live musical is the opportunity to get completely 'lost' in the beauty, the music, the experience.  Your phone is off - and so is that of every other person in the theatre.  No one comes in or goes out - or if they do, the public outcry is great. (Being scowled at by others in Britain is probably one of the worst things that can happen to someone.)  When the lights go down and the stage comes up and the music begins to play, time obligingly stands completely still and lets you forget that there are train times and flights to catch and work to do and a life to live, and you are allowed to become completely swept away.

I'd never seen Les Mis before - it was Caitlin's particular favourite, so I booked tickets for her birthday and (by a combination of being-aways), four months later we were sitting in the red plush seats and ooohing and ahhhing at the glass chandelier, the posters on the walls, the decorations, the entire theatre.  Having never seen the performance, and only making it 1/3 of the way through the book thus far (although I will still highly recommend it, and am pressing on in finishing it by the end of the year), everything was new to me.  I had no preference as to actor or performer, and everything amazed me.  I began by thinking 'This is pretty good', and by the intermission was absolutely stunned.  There is an intensity in a musical, and in a live performance, that you never feel when watching a film on your computer or the tv.  I felt as though Jean Valjean was staring directly at me, that Eponine was singing to me, that the little wink the boy-soldier gives as he watches over the others is between him and me.  And someone singing their heart out on a small stage causes the sound to fill the entire place - there is nothing left for other thoughts, other distractions.  You don't care about anything else you have to do that day, as a matter of fact you almost forget who and where you are.  For three hours, you're in Toulon, you're in Montfermeil, in Paris.  The revolution is rising around you - the red flag is waved, the smoke billows, shots ring out, hearts are broken, love is kindled, sacrifices made, and lives are lived out before your eyes.  It's the most incredible condensity of lives: all the small details are there, and the main story is there, and you feel you have lived several lives in just a few hours.  When you come out of the theatre, blinking against the bright sky, it's a surprise to see someone breakdancing to loud music, people selling things everywhere, the Tube station, modern clothing.

It was an absolute pleasure to not only experience the beauty, but to get completely lost in it . To forget anything and everything else around, to be fully 'present' in a way we often are not.  Mobile phones, computers, Skype, Facebook....everyone is constantly in three or four or twelve places at the same time.  No one is content just enjoying a new food, a new country, a funny story - it all has to be on video or on Facebook or quickly photographed. I cut my hair a month or two ago and actually had people tell me that if I didn't take photos of it, they presumed it didn't happen.  That kind of bothers me.  Can't we just enjoy things, or notice them, without having to self-publish all the time?  Is it surprising that I can cut off a foot of hair and only one or two people actually notice, because I didn't take pictures and publish it on Facebook so everyone can make comments and only participate in life virtually?  I far prefer the Les Mis option, where we weren't telling people about the experience halfway through: we were there, living it, seeing it, loving it, actually experiencing it.

May you experience something fully today.

Day 14: Autumn Beauty

I've been very lax on my blogging the last few weeks. There are a lot of reasons, but the short version is that I set it aside for a time so that I wasn't overwhelmed and overdoing.  But now I'm settling back in to Scotland (having been to Cyprus for a few weeks), and it's time to get back into the good routines.

Today I walked to the Airdrie town centre and saw autumn leaves lying about, with the trees both full of and shedding them at the same time.  It's lovely to go away in one season and come back for another - really makes you aware of the passing of time.  I left Scotland in "summer", which for us could mean anything from rain, fog, wind, hail, and mist through to sunshine, warm weather, and pleasant breezes.  And I came back to a slight chill in the air and the leaves changing colour and lying scattered about in a haze of gold on the streets.

There's such beauty in the seasons.  It's hard for me to choose the one I love best.  But if pressed, I must say autumn.  I love the drastic change from summer - you go out one morning and suddenly need a coat, a scarf, gloves in your pockets.  The air has a nip to it, and the leaves are no longer green but are brilliant reds, golds, oranges - like a thousand miniature sunsets.  Autumn is so generous - the crisp, glorious leaves lie about in piles everywhere.  When it's dry, you can go crunching through them to your heart's content, or have them fall upon you from above as you're walking, with no messiness or cleaning up to do (at least of your person - if you have a garden you'll need to be cleaning leaves for many days!).  It's generous with wind, too - no longer the slight, pleasant breezes of summer: now the wind is released from its storehouses and goes whipping around in great enthusiasm, encouraging everyone to wake up and take notice.  It stirs the leaves up in little flurries everywhere - like excited children dancing about the streets, whirling this way and then that way, going crazy in exuberance as though suddenly set free after months of hanging on the edge of the tree branch. The chill air brings a liveliness to your cheeks, and even breathing it in makes you feel sharply alive.  Autumn doesn't allow you to be lazy, or weary, or sleepy.  It wakes you up, startles you, shakes the boredom out and flings you into a world that demands to be noticed - either in the glorious autumn colours, or in the wildness of the weather.

Either way, there is great beauty in this season, and we're on the cusp of it today.  Bring it on!