The Invitation of Beauty
Friday, October 7, 2011 at 1:55PM 
By Jerry Gillis
Reading the Bible is an adventure for me. Sometimes it's like an amusement park where I soar in the adrenaline of the roller coasters. Other times it feels like a hike up a mountain - the air gets thin and I get a bloody nose. Still other times it is akin to a middle school dance: I unashamedly love the music but feel really awkward on the dance floor (plus, I still have have some "space dust" crackling in my mouth and sticking to my last remaining baby tooth)
But reading Philippians 4:8 today was more like a tour of an art museum - you have to see and think beyond what you saw and thought. The Scripture is art - beautiful in and of itself. But this Scripture before us tells us not to think about the Scripture before us, but instead to think about other things. Beautiful things. So often, we miss these types of invitations in the masterful artwork known to us as Scripture. We often memorize it and read it and teach it. Sometimes we just forget to do it, and that is the greater thing indeed.
Paul tells us in this passage not to memorize what he says here. Nor are we specifically told to teach it (though, of things.
course, that is fine). What we are told to do is to think about some things - beautiful things. Pure things. Lovely, admirable, praiseworthy things.
So I started thinking about beautiful things. And lots of things came to mind.
My wife on our wedding day. My wife every other day since. The artistry of both of my boys when they are playing baseball. The taste of apple pie. The feeling I get sitting on blankets with family and friends watching a show in shorts and flip-flops weather. The smell of babies after they have taken a bath. The sound of Eric Clapton's guitar. The lyrics to "Make You Feel My Love." The connection my heart feels to a cello. The view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Switzerland. The smell of books.
I could go on and on, and so could you.
So, why the exercise? Why does Paul tell us to think about such things? Well, I don't know precisely. Presumably, there is layer upon layer of reasons - many of which you could articulate. But the one that resonates with me the loudest is the one that I have asked many times in my life, even from times of adolescence.
What makes these things beautiful? Where did all the beauty come from?
Obviously, I know the answer to that question. But that is not the point really; important for sure, but not the point. Intellectually understanding that all the beauty comes from God and is a gift of God and is tied up in God doesn't satisfy us completely. It is an incredible thing to see the beauty - incredible indeed - but there is a desire, a longing, for something more. At this point, I must yield the floor to the great C.S. Lewis:
"We want so much more - something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it." (The Weight of Glory).
This beauty that we see, we want to enter into. Humanity's secret is exposed by beauty - the longing of our hearts that we attempt to articulate but cannot describe. We want to be where the beauty is - where the light is; to live in it and breathe it in. We sense a resonance with beauty far beyond us, yet it feels like home - as if, for some inexplicable reason, we were made for it. Again, Lewis:
"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." (Till We Have Faces).
This, I suspect, is the invitation of beauty: To find the place where all the beauty came from. The road of beauty is designed to lead to God.
Think about such .!
Jerry Gillis is Lead Pastor of The Chapel at Crosspoint in Getzville.
