Enjoying Beauty -- Outside reading
While on spring break I began reading a book by Steve DeWitt, Eyes Wide Open, which has provided helpful insight into the class content and discussions. DeWitt wrote the book in hopes to help the reader understand God's purposes for our joy and wonder. He shows how it is possible to enrich common experiences such as sports, sunsets, and painting by turning them to their created purpose. In chapter one he writes:
"Every created beauty was created by God to lead our affections to Him. That's why He made the pleasures of earthly beauty so fleeting - so that on the other side of the pleasure we might experience either wonder and worship and ultimate satisfaction in God or the pursuit of the pleasure that beauty provides for its own sake. If we choose the latter, we will only be disappointed again" (Steve DeWitt, 7).
I have found in my life and in the lives of my close loved ones that there exists in all of our actions a longing for God. There is this restlessness that plagues my heart if I remove myself from His presence. DeWitt makes an interesting point when he states that "every created beauty was created by God to lead our affections to Him" because it points everything declared beautiful to the Creator, God. What if creation was merely a self-portrait of its Creator so that in everything we might acknowledge Him? What if every sunset viewed, every song sung, every favorite food enjoyed isn't ultimately about the pleasure it brings but is instead a reflection of God's character?
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