Day 8: Beauty

What do you see here? Do you see beauty? If you take it all apart, here you have a piece of construction paper and some pipe cleaners. They are made into a bouquet of sorts and held together by that purple pipe cleaner at the bottom. Colorful, certainly, but is it beautiful?

What makes this bouquet beautiful is its intention. This was made by a six-year-old girl at church. She was waiting for her mom and dad to get out of a meeting, and she made this "for Pastor John and for the church." 

Now, have you ever seen anything more beautiful? The intent behind this gift was to bless with an object of beauty and care.

We can find beauty anywhere. I'm wondering if what makes things beautiful to us has to do with the one who sees the beauty or the one who creates the beauty. Or both? 

So many times we might overlook beauty until someone else points it out to us. Maybe it wasn't the beauty we were looking for.

On the other hand, the beauty of creation must come from the intent of the Creator to bless us with no need or expectation of reciprocity. God makes beauty just for beauty - it's useless, except for our joy and wonder and our knowing him and his character more deeply. He is the kind of God who makes beauty just for his good pleasure! That makes him different from me, and I want to worship a God like that.