Beauty full

Was there ever a time when all of humanity was more eager to put a year behind us and welcome a new beginning? This day definitely calls for fireworks and celebratory, socially-distant merrymaking in hopeful anticipation of a much better year ahead.

I’ve always loved fireworks and am still in awe of the whole pyrotechnic thing. I love how they start out small and condensed, plain and unattractive in appearance, and end up huge and beautiful, with colors so bright they draw you in and make you smile. For a few seconds . . . and then they disappear.

I’m thinking there are a few truths and life lessons I could piggyback on the facts about fireworks. Their short lifespan reminds one of the fleetingness of this existence. Their awesomeness resulting from a single spark speaks to the potential in each one of us. But the one I sensed nudging me to open up this here word processor was the plain fact of their joy-inspiring beauty.

I’ve been writing a lot about things that are wrong in the world, because they bother me so. But the fireworks welcoming this new year remind me that there is much that is beautiful, and that beauty is from the mind of God. He didn’t directly create the dazzling magnificence of these pyrotechnic wonders. But he created the elements that combine to form them, the atmosphere that allows them to explode in symmetry, the energy in various wavelengths that results in almost limitless colors, the eye that is so wondrously designed to behold them, and the human mind that can craft them and marvel at their brilliance.

God did directly create the beauty of the butterfly, the Rockies, and the rose. He intentionally fashioned the sunset, the moon, and the star-filled sky. His fingertips are seen in the graceful curves of a horse, the snow-covered branches of the evergreen, and the mesmerizing hue of fall leaves, embracing their impending demise in a blaze of glory. And have you seen a little child lately?

Beauty was God’s idea, and he is still in the business of it, even in the midst of all the ugliness we’ve created. Whether it’s a night sky filled with fireworks or blanketed with stars, the sun setting over the ocean or signaling the dawn in vivid pink and orange, the eyes of your newborn child or your saintly grandmother, he gives us beauty to enjoy each day. And why? Just because, you might say. Because it brings joy, and a loving Father loves to see his children smile.

And if this life has so much beauty in it, even though it is so tainted with sin and sadness, how much more will the next life have when sin and sadness, tears and pain, will be no more? I don’t think our earthbound minds and senses can fathom it.

But we can take it by faith that Heaven will be beautiful . . . full of beauty . . . beyond our wildest imaginations. Because we know the One who created beauty, as well as our ability to imagine. And his omnipotent, creative genius gives us confidence that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.