Tuesday, November 13, 2012

His Beauty, Our Senses

        God could have created a universe that bears no appeal to our senses.  He could have made the rose to emit no sweet fragrance.  He could have formed our bodies without the nerve endings that feel refreshing cool winds in our faces.  He could have constituted food and drink without flavor, leaving the hot chocolate I enjoy as I write this with no appeal. He could have omitted sound from our experience, meaning no music, no lonesome train whistles heard in the distance, and no sweet voice of the child to grace our days.  He could have determined a heaven and earth of blacks, whites and grays wherein no hues exist to thrill us with scenes of wonder.

      God could also have created fragrance, texture, flavor, sound and sight, but have formed us without the senses to experience and enjoy them.  God could have done this, and all the aforementioned possibilities.

     But He didn’t.  Instead, our Creator made a universe of indescribable beauty and wonder, and He then placed in human beings the capacity for sensory experience of His sublime creativity.

     “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us” (Psalm 90:17).

       Beauty made beauty, that is, the good and loving heart of God formed a gallery called creation, and then He lavishly dispersed His art throughout the universe in a myriad of forms that call to our senses, “God… giveth us richly all things to enjoy!” (I Timothy 6:17).  Indeed, no asceticism exists in Biblical Christianity, nor does our Heavenly Father command an existence wherein we subdue our senses in a misguided attempt to obtain holiness by fleshly abnegation of gifts given to be enjoyed.  “Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances? Touch not; taste not; handle not; which all are to perish with the using, after the commandments and doctrines of men” (Colossians 2:20-21).

     We must proclaim the Artist!  We must enjoy His art, and encourage others to open eyes, ears and hearts to the wonder, the splendor, the glory of a life lived in relationship with the Maker of beauty, and the Maker of our capacities to experience it.  Certainly, we do so in conformity with the Scriptural parameters that differentiate God’s beauty from Satan’s deceptive counterfeits.  We do not, however, allow the possibility of such deception to keep us from expecting experiences given by the Holy Spirit that fill and thrill our senses with godly wonder. The gallery is open.  The Artist is present in His art. He beckons us to so behold that His beauty is upon us. May we not miss this, the opportunity of a lifetime in which God determines to fill and thrill our senses with His glory, with His wonder, and with Himself.

“The whole earth is full of His glory!”(Isaiah 6:3)

 

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