Beauty

 

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4 ESV).

 

There are those days when I sit down to put words to paper surrounding the thoughts and meditations I’ve had. Today I’m a bit torn. My thoughts don’t seem to be as singularly focused as usual. There is so much happening so quickly in our world. That seems to be true whether we look truly in a global way or more microscopically at our individual lives. These are complex times; however, we must not think there is a complex answer to the questions.

 

While sitting outside early this morning, just after the sunrise, I noticed several Brewer’s Blackbirds flying in and near a clump of trees in the back of our property. As I watched, two paid particular attention to a martin-house I had lowered and not raised for the spring migration. Suddenly I realized that they had some chicks in one of the nesting boxes of the house. They flitted back and forth bringing food to the newborn chicks one after the other. There must be three or more chicks in the nest as they came multiple times with food for their brood. This gave me a singular thought to pursue in the coming days. The simple answer to the complex issues surrounding us is the glory of God. There is purpose and beauty in everything He has created. Recognizing the beauty all around us brings encouragement even in the most trying of circumstances.

 

There are many ways we can see this glory. Our reading today from Psalm 19 shows that we can learn about God’s glory through nature. It says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Another way to put it, according to this psalm, is that “the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” This is a strange and poetic picture. Even though the sky doesn’t speak our dialect verbally, there is no doubt to the declaration: “They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them” (v. 3).  And yet the sky, by its simple, beautiful existence, communicates to the world about God, its creator. So it was with the blackbirds this morning!

 

God has created a beautiful world. This world, simply by being what God created it to be, gives voice to the beauty of God himself. This beauty is a mere foretaste of that yet to come for all of us who have placed our faith in Christ. Let’s focus our attention there!