Escaping the Beauty

I love the Rocky mountains! If you've never been, they're kind of difficult to explain without trying to sound like a poet. Said most simply, they're "take your breath away" beautiful. They make you feel small in the grand scheme of things, like you could simply tuck yourself away in a fold of the mountains and live there without any worries.

I was born there at the foot of Pike's Peak, knowing nothing other than these mountains until grade school when I moved to Florida. We made it back often throughout each year, and every time without fail, I was caught saying "wow". Whether driving through a pass of mountains, or sitting on a rock on a hike and just taking in the landscape, their beauty is inescapable.

It struck me this week, however, usually around a week or so into my trip, they become somewhat normal. Not their beauty is any less than picturesque, but that they have simply become familiar.

Too often this is how it works with the people and places we become familiar with, their humor, and uniqueness, their skills and strengths, and even their beauty can seem to become somewhat tarnished. It's almost as if we can easily forget the greatness of the things that are closest to us.

David prayed to the Lord in Psalm 27:4 and asked that he might gaze upon the unique in incomparable beauty of the Lord. What we have seen in our day is the fulfillment of that beauty in the life of the God-man Jesus Christ. He is the essence of humility, serving those who were hard to serve, loving the unlovable, and seeking out those who sought to tear him down. His was a mission of grace, revealing the beauty of God through the gospel of reconciliation and surrendering his life for the atoning sacrifice of all who believe.

He has made this reconciliation available to us, and we are invited into restored into relationship with God through Christ. This is tangible beauty, this beauty is here and it is ever-present. The crux of this beauty, however, is that it far too often becomes familiar, and in that familiarity, the beauty of our Holy God can become sullied in our own eyes.

What is lacking in my life when I see the Lord like this is the same thing that escapes me when the Rockies become less beautiful; it's perspective. We are finite beings, who live in houses that will erode, and bodies that will become dust very soon. We must look to truth to see everything as God does. Through his scripture he reveals himself, and his great desire for all men to know him. The works of his hands are evident as we gain this perspective, and as we see him as He truly is, we will see him in all His glory high and lifted up, as our great God and King, beautiful.