I've been thinking a lot about beauty. It's one of my favorite topics because I'm in awe of how God's way of how we should live causes our lives to look incredibly beautiful. His "rules" and do's and do not's give our lives a shine and glow that making choices based on the world's values does not. We are kept free from a lot of filth and a lot of heartache.
C.S. Lewis talks about how we can look into the past to try to find beauty and good feelings and good times. We disguise our longings by calling it reminiscing or being nostalgic. He says if we constantly look into the past at "the good old days" our hearts are going to be continuously broken by what we don't find. He states that God uses situations and people in our lives to shine his beauty through, but that it is not contained in those moments. If we are constantly staring into the past to feel how we once felt, we will find empty shells of what God used at the time to enrich our lives.
This encouraged me so much to look at what God is using every single day, in our very present present, to shine his beauty and incredibleness into our lives. Beauty and everything good and perfect is contained in God. Everything else is just a vessel created to show it off. There's nothing wrong with looking at what God has done in the past and thanking him for the good that happened, but when it prevents you from seeing the goodness in the day in front of you, it's reflecting in a way that sucks a bit of joy out of our lives. We don't have to think the good days have come and gone, or on the flip side, that the good is yet to come. God is not boxed into time frames and certain moments of our lives. He flows continuously through our lives, moment by moment as it's happening to us. We can be encouraged knowing that God is working today to make our lives more incredible.
Disclaimer: there may be some theological flaws in those statement, but I felt I could safely put this out there as a musing :)
C.S. Lewis talks about how we can look into the past to try to find beauty and good feelings and good times. We disguise our longings by calling it reminiscing or being nostalgic. He says if we constantly look into the past at "the good old days" our hearts are going to be continuously broken by what we don't find. He states that God uses situations and people in our lives to shine his beauty through, but that it is not contained in those moments. If we are constantly staring into the past to feel how we once felt, we will find empty shells of what God used at the time to enrich our lives.
This encouraged me so much to look at what God is using every single day, in our very present present, to shine his beauty and incredibleness into our lives. Beauty and everything good and perfect is contained in God. Everything else is just a vessel created to show it off. There's nothing wrong with looking at what God has done in the past and thanking him for the good that happened, but when it prevents you from seeing the goodness in the day in front of you, it's reflecting in a way that sucks a bit of joy out of our lives. We don't have to think the good days have come and gone, or on the flip side, that the good is yet to come. God is not boxed into time frames and certain moments of our lives. He flows continuously through our lives, moment by moment as it's happening to us. We can be encouraged knowing that God is working today to make our lives more incredible.
Disclaimer: there may be some theological flaws in those statement, but I felt I could safely put this out there as a musing :)
lovely. I was given a book recently called "God thinks you're wonderful" and this is a quote that struck me: "The next time a sunrise steals your breath... or a meadow of flowers leaves you speechless... remain that way. Say nothing and listen as heaven whispers, 'Do you like it? I did it just for you' "
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