Day 44

Yesterday I left you hanging with a question: Do you intentionally surround yourself with beauty or do you wait to stumble upon it? Well?

I would think that with most people it is a combination of both. People tend to surround themselves with things that they like, which in this case we will define as things that are beautiful to them.  They have music that they like, clothes that they like, a favorite mug, a colorful poster or painting, etc. But I think that most of us reach of point of surrounding ourself with beauty and then we stop.  And the reason we stop is because we feel guilty.  Let me explain.

As Christians, we are told to fight our sinful desires.  It just so happens that a lot of our sinful desires are things that we enjoy doing.  Let's face it: humans enjoy sinning. Eating a whole bag of chocolates would be fun, but it wouldn't make us good stewards of our bodies. Driving twenty miles over the speed limit is fun, but it is also against the law. Sleeping in until noon every day would be lovely, but it is also not a good way of redeeming the time. You get the idea.  We like to sin, and we constantly have to fight that sin.  Here is how this connects with beauty:  Christians are programmed to look out for sin, and sin is often something that we enjoy doing.  We enjoy beauty, therefore we become suspicious of it. We know that beauty isn't intrinsically evil just like money isn't intrinsically evil, but we are afraid of indulging in beauty too much.  Can beauty become an idol? Absolutely! You don't have too look far to find the idol of beauty in our culture. It's everywhere.  Christians see how our culture has caused beauty to become a sin, and in order not to stumble they err on the side of caution.  Out of the fear of over-indulging in beauty, we tend to limit our exposure and enjoyment of beauty. Stop and think about that for a minute.  Is that true?

I'm not going to tell you what the proper amount of beauty in your lives is; I can't. But I am going to encourage you to try to surround yourselves with more beauty. God created beauty and it's right and good to enjoy it.  In fact, it should drawn us to worship God when we see something inherently beautiful. It could be something as simple as changing the desktop background on your computer. On mine I have a gorgeous close-up photograph that my brother took last summer of an vibrant orange poppy. It's beautiful, an I enjoy looking at it.  Do something, whether big or small, and enjoy the beauty that God has blessed us with.