Looking For Beauty

I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart.

Waves rippled over our feet as we walked along the shoreline. The dark, wet sand dragged at my heels as I followed my Aunt Debbie, who urged us on with a smile.

That morning, she’d asked my sister and me if we wanted to go searching for sea glass, and we’d agreed. As we strolled along one of her favorite beaches, the people thinned out until it felt like we were nearly alone, the cliffs at our backs, blue water ahead, and a vast sky above us.

This trip—my first to Washington—was unexpected. I’d gotten a call from my sister, her voice solemn.

“Uncle Michael isn’t doing well,” she’d said. “The cancer is worse. Mom, Dad, and Aunt Delpha are visiting in a couple of weeks. We should go too.”

In the flurry of preparation, I hadn’t given much time to thinking about the reason for our visit—not until I saw my uncle’s diminished stature, his exhaustion, and the muted pain in his kind eyes. But his voice was just as warm as always, and for the next few days, we basked in our time together. As we sat around the table and reminisced, we captured my uncle’s words, along with family memories from the rest of us, on an audio recorder. That trip was the last time I’d hear his voice in person.

But on the day we were searching for sea glass, I couldn’t help but feel grateful. With my eyes downcast, each glimmer of blue, white, or green reminded me of how beauty could be found in unexpected places. The Bible reminds us that everything is beautiful in its time. But the flip side to this fleeting beauty is that it points us to an eternal God. Though the beauty we experience is temporary, God is not.

And in every moment of that trip—when we stopped at a farmer’s market, drove up the mountainside, visited coastal boutiques, sipped cider at an orchard—beauty was evident. Though the threat of loss hung like a heavy pall, the hope of an eternity with God was on the horizon. And every fleeting moment of beauty served as a reminder of the unchanging nature of our eternal God.

Kristin

Today’s Act of Gratitude

Thank God for small reminders of the beauty of his creation.