Holy Wonder: Beauty
What is beautiful?
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Sunset over Lake Michigan.
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Stars in a place like Observatory Park – a little
east of Chardon – one of the two dark parks in Ohio.
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Grandmother holding her newborn grandson.
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A perfect baseball game – no runs, hits, or
errors.
Have you ever paused to wonder why there is beauty?
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People ask, “What is beauty”?
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Rarely do they ask, “why”?
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Some of the explanations I’ve heard:
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Evolutionary advantage.
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There is no such thing as beauty – a trick of
the brain.
o
It is part of God’s design and delight in
creation.
This is a question that one of my favorite modern
theologians, Dr. David Schmitt of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, took up a
couple of years ago in an essay entitled “Holy Wonder: The Experience of Beauty
and Credal Contemplation.”
What is the purpose of beauty?
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Is it merely ornamental?
o
A pastor at a conference refused to acknowledge
the Psalms were poetry. “Isn’t that cute?”
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Is it expendable?
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Nice to have if we can, but who needs it?
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Perhaps, however, beauty is an invitation to
explore:
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God’s goodness.
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God’s creative glory.
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God’s gracious redemption.
o
God’s gift of hope in a fallen world.
Notice that those last three points correspond to God’s
revelation of Himself in the Apostles’ Creed.
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Beauty transports us – opens us – to experience
God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in ways our fallen perception might
otherwise be incapable of.
Beauty is a gift that helps us to experience God.
Over the next three weeks, we’ll consider beauty – using insights
from Dr. Schmitt – in the context of the Trinity as we confess it in the
Apostles’ Creed.
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