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Psalm 27:4 NLT
‘The one thing I ask of the Lord – the thing I seek most – is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his Temple.‘
Beauty, it is said, is in the eye of the beholder. Some see great beauty in God while others fail to notice it throughout their lives. I know as Katey wrestled with her MS, it was the increasing onset of spasticity that challenged her perception of her own beauty. One thing is certain, twisted and fixed as her physical body became, the beauty of her spirit rose to replace it a thousand-fold.
In describing the Messiah, Isaiah (53:2) says that he was unremarkable. There was nothing about him that was attractive. Yet, here, the psalmist declares, his self-realisation lies in gazing upon God’s beauty. So there is something that lies beyond looks, something that is perceived with the eye. For beauty is pleasing, especially to the eye, but who among us can gaze upon God?
There is a mystery in pursuing God, a beauty of the unseen that captivates the believer. It’s this beauty that tantalised me as I struggled with my role of carer, Katey’s slow demise and my own internal angst. I wanted to find something of God that lay behind all the prescriptive truth I knew. Something of the personal and tender love my heart craved. Slowly, through a reluctant obedience, I persevered with silent prayer, seeking God in the rhythm of the psalms. This rhythm was an echo of God’s own heartbeat forever beating down the centuries and calling all of us home.
Now I gazed and slowly found the beauty of God, as surely as I had in Katey’s broken body. It was not only conceptual, but deeply theological for I was inspired by God’s reality in the privacy of my own prayer. I had entered God’s very dwelling place and knew the sweet aroma of Christ. In an instant age, this is never something available either at the flick of a switch nor readily scheduled into an over-busy lifestyle. It is the gift arising from the fruit of faithful pilgrimage in search of God.
QUESTION: Do you gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, or does the presence of God seem distant?
PRAYER: Lord, may you be what I seek most in my life.
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