Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


10.17.2004  

Cherishing Beauty

"The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish."



-John Piper



I find that there are things in life that are hard to let go of...friends, family, familiar places. When viewed in light of the beauty of God's goodness to us, they become the sweetest of memories rather than bitter ones that gnaw at us. I was telling Jewel today about how I deal with the reality that I may never see my home again. She knows how much I miss it; I glowingly talk about it all the time. Brian and Andrew are always very respectful of how much I miss home and are careful not to speak of the latest surf news with too much regularity or fervor, lest it come across as gloating. Yet, they know how much I really do enjoy hearing them talk about it, if only because it reaffirms that my boys are doing what my boys were created to do: enjoying the creation Jesus made for us and watching it over for me until the day I get to enjoy it with them once more.



But that only illustrates the fruit of God's goodness in revealing His beauty to a wretch like me. *Sigh*...if I could only find the words to speak of how beautiful Christ is...if I could only lose all my words, that I might see all the more how beautiful Christ is! Today as I lay in bed, I wept at how amazingly good the Lord has been to me. Though I find within me all the reasons for the wrath God's Word speaks of, I find within Christ and the breathtaking beauty of His cross all the truths that quell my writhing guilt. I lay there and wept from the knowledge that though the Lord blesses me so very abundantly, His blessings are only there to propound to the glory of His name in my life, and if such blessings do not stir me to trust in Him all the more, they become idols that must be destroyed. I lay there and wept, realizing once more that the Lord truly is the Sovereign Maker, Creator, and Lover of my soul. How can I deny Him His desire? How can I not delight in His desire?



To not obey the Lord is to close my eyes to the beauty of my Lord. How can I do such? When I look into His word, I see a sovereign Lord who knows my every pain, my every lonely tear; it is He who yearned over Israel as a husband for His wayward bride, He who stayed Abraham's killing blow to the child of promise only to sacrifice His own Child of Promise, He who wept and bled and begged the Father to take away His cup before even suffering the torture of the cross. On the cross, the Father poured out His terrible wrath upon His own son that I might come to delight in Him. On the cross, Christ was torn from the eternal intimacy with the Father and was made to be sin. On the cross, Christ knew a loneliness and a pain that I will never know. He is not a Lord who is far off, nor is He one that ought to be near. Through the mysterious cross the beauty of God's nature is brought near and made precious to me, who was once an enemy; how can I not cherish His beauty? How can I not be changed by His love? How can I not desire to delight in all things for the sake of seeing and savoring His beauty all the more? As Isaac Watts so rightly put it, "love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."



I told Jewel that as hard as it was to deal with the possibility of not seeing home ever again, it was the love of God that got me through. Should I truly not ever see it again, it is His love that will get me through. When she asked why He'd do that, I said I didn't know, but that God is God, and I'm not. When dealing with things I love and cherish so desperately, I have to be careful that I love and cherish them for the sake of Christ, lest I love them not at all. It's a beautiful thing that the we can see the Lord's glory in the salty ocean swells; should I not see it in the cold and strange autumn morning as well? Indeed I should, and I should always see it so! If I do not, it is because I'm forgetting the beauty of the cross of Christ :)

posted by Bolo | 11:31 PM
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