I’ve gotten the privilege of traveling around the U.S. a lot. My first birthday was spent in New Mexico, my ninth in Utah, my eleventh somewhere in the U.S. - I’ve forgotten where - and my thirteenth driving across Kansas. I learned to walk in Utah and learned to talk in Montana. I’ve spent Christmas in Texas, California, Arizona, and Florida in various years growing up. I’ve gotten to see natural wonders like Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Arches, and Mt. Reiner. I’ve climbed mountains, hiked along beaches lining the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as well as the Gulf of Mexico, seen arches and natural bridges, waded in the longest rivers the continental U.S. has to offer, and stood on the edge of canyons so deep I could hardly see the bottom. I visited 48 states before I was a teenager (more than a decade later, I’m still waiting on my last two...) And yes, I’ve called New York State my home my entire life. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with American geography, the Grand Canyon is about 2,000 miles away from my home...California is more like 2,500 or even 3,000 miles away.)
There’s nothing like gazing on natural beauty and realizing that one, you have the privilege of knowing the Creator, and two...He thinks you’re even more beautiful than that. There’s also nothing like seeing the awesome grandeur of creation to inspire praise in a dry heart. You have to be more than half-dead spiritually to not recognize the wonder of creation as the handiwork of God. The verse “the fool says in his heart ‘there is no God’” has always struck me as particularly true when I’m staring at a wonderous vista. It’s the night sky that seems to do the most damage to unbelief, though. If you’ve ever curled up in a cozy sleeping bag on a tarp lying on the windswept sand of Death Valley or Canyonlands and looked up in the darkness, you probably know what I mean. How can so many stars be packed so tightly together? Having been raised in the east, where there is a lot more atmosphere between the earth and the heavens, star-gazing is in some ways easier, but not quite so mesmerizing. I can pick out some constellations - Orion’s belt and sword, the big dipper - and some of the planets if they happen to be visible. In the desert, it can be hard to figure out what’s a constellation and what’s just a thousand stars so closely packed it’s almost hard to distinguish one from the whole. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night, they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard, their voice goes out into all the earth; their words to the end of the world.” To quote the late singer/songwriter Carman, “When the fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God,’ he rejects the truth God painted on the canvas of the night.” Creation is one of those things that I would imagine is hard to study and not marvel. Even if you subscribe to the school of thought that the world we live in evolved over millions of years, you’ve got to admit the miracle of what we see around us in the natural world and stand in wonder. The nineteenth-century naturalist John Muir put forth an opinion in an unpublished memoir, that has always left me thinking. “The color beauty of these mosses, at least in mass, was not made for human eyes, nor for the wild horses that inhabit these plains, nor the antelopes, but perhaps the little creatures enjoy their own beauty, and perhaps the insects that dwell in these forests and climb their shining columns enjoy it. But we know that however faint, and however shaded, no part of it is lost, for all color is received into the eyes of God.” When you stop and think about it, all the beautiful things in this world are meant to draw us into a place of awe and wonder. But at the end of the day, I think God just appreciates beauty. He creates the flowers nobody ever sees simply for His own pleasure. God loves beauty. And what’s more, He thinks each and every one of us is more beautiful than any of the rest of His creation. Who are we to deny that? Yet we spend our lives trying to fit society’s standards of beauty. We try to make ourselves desirable to people, not realizing that we are beautiful already in God’s eyes. And it’s His opinion that matters at the end of the day. So next time you get the chance to go outside and look around, whether you live in a city with soaring skyscrapers or in the country with stately oaks surrounding your home or if you live in a desert with sagebrush and Mormon Tea as far as the eye can see, remember this. Beauty is in the eye of the Creator, and He thinks you’re more beautiful than all creation put together.
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Sarah GraceHi! I'm Sarah Grace, and I'm so glad you stopped by the Wings of Heaven blog! You can find short posts for easy reading or longer, more in-depth musings! I hope you're blessed! Archives
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