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There’s so much beauty around us for just two eyes to see. But everywhere I go, I’m looking.
“Our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.”
Our wounds are not beautiful in themselves; the story behind their healing is.
It is hard to render an honest self-portrait if we want to conceal what is unattractive and hide what’s broken. We want to appear beautiful. But when we do this, we hide what needs redemption—what we trust Christ to redeem. And everything redeemed by Christ becomes beautiful.
A print of Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear hangs in my office to remind me that if I’m drawing the self-portrait dishonestly—pretending I’m okay when I actually need help—I’m concealing from others the fact that I am broken. But my wounds need binding. I need asylum. And if I can’t show that honestly, how will anyone ever see Christ in me? Or worse, what sort of Christ will they see?
This is how we should see others and how we should be willing to be seen by others: broken and of incalculable worth.
Madeleine L’Engle reminds us that God often works through the most seemingly unqualified people to reveal his glory.
Check footnote
Three properties of being that transcend the capacities of all other creatures, known as transcendentals, have risen to the surface: the human desire for goodness, for truth, and for beauty.
Goodness, truth, and beauty were established for us by the God who is defined by all three.
The pursuit of goodness, the pursuit of truth, and the pursuit of beauty are, in fact, foundational to the health of any community.
The pursuit of beauty requires the application of goodness and truth for the benefit of others. Beauty is what we make of goodness and truth.
Beauty takes the pursuit of goodness past mere personal ethical conduct to the work of intentionally doing good to and for others. Beauty takes the pursuit of truth past the accumulation of knowledge to the proclamation and application of truth in the name of caring for others.
beauty shows us where we’re wrong.
“Beauty brings copies of itself into being. It makes us draw it, take photographs of it, or describe it to other people.”
Beauty inspires creativity, and creativity is a path to more beauty.
Creation testifies to a Maker who delights in beauty for beauty’s sake.
Story is a trojan horse for truth. It can sneak truth past the gates of our defenses and prepare our hearts to hear things we might have resisted if they had come as mere declaration.
Beauty is a relic of Eden—a remnant of what is good. It comes from a deeper realm. It trickles into our lives as water from a crack in a dam, and what lies on the other side of that dam fills us with wonder and fear. Glory lies on the other side. And we were made for glory.
I cannot think of a single thing in my life that doesn’t bear the touch of others. I’m guessing you can’t either. Of course we wish some of those chisel marks never happened—the ones that draw from us a plea for mercy, the ones that kindle a hunger for the renewal of all things. But other marks have been necessary to give us eyes to behold goodness, truth, and beauty we would not have known otherwise.
Living with limits is one of the ways we enter into beauty we would not have otherwise seen, good work we would not have chosen, and relationships we would not have treasured. For the Christian, accepting our limits is one of the ways we are shaped to fit together as living stones into the body of Christ. As much as our strengths are a gift to the church, so are our limitations.
Our best attempts at achieving perfection this side of glory come from an innate awareness that it not only exists, but that we were made for it.
In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. Madeleine L’Engle
Life etches itself onto our faces as we grow older, showing our violence, excesses or kindnesses. Rembrandt van Rijn
The work never again appears to her as an ordinary piece of art, but as part of her own collection. When she saw the work the first time, it belonged to the world. But by the time she leaves that initial viewing, it belongs to her.
This is the intangibility of genius—to create work that transfers from the canvas, the page, or the instrument into the heart of another person, arousing a longing for beauty and an end to sadness.
“Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke.”
This is the power of art. It happens in time and space, but it points to the eternal. It takes the objects and ideas it finds lying around, the things of the here and now, and assembles them into something that belongs to a world outside of time. The trick for artists is to believe this is the true nature of their work, especially while they are in the process of making it, whether it sells or not.
Art has always been a means of shaping hearts and minds.
We are shaped by those who come before us, by those who invest in us, by those who teach us skills, by those who hand down convictions, and by those who pour love into us when we are young.
“It is not by accident that I have chosen to be a religious painter . . . I have no doubt an inheritance of religious feeling, and for this I am glad, but I also have a decided and I hope an intelligent religious faith not due to inheritance but to my own convictions.”17
If only people could look beyond their imagined impressions of others, if only we could see each other as we really are and not as exaggerated stereotypes, if only a genuine curiosity about the lives of others formed our pursuit to know them, then so many of the forces that divide us would be emptied of their power.
We would see the common human experiences of joy and sorrow, love and loss, struggle and victory in those around us, and we would count it all sacred. Understanding would replace ignorance. Respect would overcome resistance.
“At crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.”
She was in church, about to put her offering into the offering plate. Carved into the middle of the plate was the pierced hand of Christ. Seeing it, she emptied her entire purse into the dish. What else could she do? If the hand of Christ asks for what she possessed, what could she possibly withhold?
Lilias made up her mind—she would give herself to serving the poor, and in whatever role her art played, she would use her creative instinct and imagination to create places where the downtrodden would find respect, support, and, if God allowed, Christ himself.
the liberty of those who have nothing to lose, because they have nothing to keep. We can do without anything while we have God.”
“The pain of which Lily spoke was the inevitable sense of loss any human being experiences when recognizing the toll of giving up something good for something he or she deems better.”31
Quoting the nineteenth-century priest Ugo Bassi, Lilias wrote in her diary, “Measure thy life by loss, not by gain; not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth. For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice, and he who suffers most has most to give.”
“The results need not end with our earthly days. God may use, by the wonderful solidarity of the church, the things he has wrought in us for the blessings of souls unknown to us.”35
Service to the Lord is never wasted, even if people don’t see it. God sees it and uses it.
“Try to put well in practice what you already know; and in so doing, you will, in good time, discover the hidden things which you now inquire about. Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.”
He couldn’t be a different painter. He could only be Rembrandt. And this is what he sought to master: how to be Rembrandt.
What are you mastering? What are you practicing in order to make clear what you don’t yet know? If you’re anything like me, I’m sure you reach points where you begin to wonder if it might just be easier to plateau. And if not plateau, then quit altogether. Don’t. Please. This world is short on masters, and consequently, it’s a world short on joy too.
