Beauty Matters: Part Deux

I've been thinking a lot about beauty since my post yesterday. Going way back to Genesis, everything God created was beautiful. Yes, even spiders...to God they have to be beautiful. I don't think He said, "well, I've created all these beautiful trees, rivers, planets, horses, kittens and now I'm just tired of beauty. I believe I'll create anti-beauty. Yes, this little critter here, the cricket (that is what Adam will name it later, I'm sure) will be ugly. Yes, ugly - because this world is just too darn pretty."

No, I have to imagine that everything God creates is beautiful in His eyes. (Notice I said, "in His eyes?" Crickets are not so beautiful to me. But maybe I need to look at them through His eyes.) So, ugliness entered our world at the time of the Fall. Fertile soil gave way to barren ground. Pretty trees died. Animals and people became violent. Ugly entered our lives due to the affect of sin.

So, as artists and creative souls, we are hard-wired to create beauty, just as God does. Sadly our world has become rather full of anti-beauty due to its brokenness. I believe that as we live into our creative image of God, which is in us, we can offset the ugly as we create and appreciate beauty.

The photographer captures the gentleness of a father holding his new little girl. The painter splashes colors upon a canvas to imitate the ocean's courageous breakers. The musician records onto paper the melody that has been laying quietly in his mind. The potter gracefully forms a slender vessel that one day will support a handful of fresh cut flowers. The poet's words dance across the page as an expression of her tender heart.

Each of us have the ability to create beauty through our creative voice. We can make our beautiful - yet broken - world sparkle like the night sky as we bring forth the beauty that is in us and longs to be expressed through the arts.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir

grace & peace on the creative journey ~ deAnn