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.