Hunting for Beauty

It's December 1st, but rare fall colors are still lingering in Texas while I sit on a restful cabin porch in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Before I left town on Monday, I spent precious time I didn't have driving around looking for the prettiest autumn trees I could find. We so rarely get them in Texas. I found many, and was feeling full and satisfied, heading home, when I caught a glimpse of a tree on the street to my right. I turned around, and as I pulled onto that street, it stood tall to greet me. An explosion of scarlet leaves like flames, reaching high into the sky, spreading above the adjacent rooftops, towering over the other trees. A beacon of beauty directing the gaze upward. I pulled over, toppling out of my car, and snapped a picture of it, the screen missing out on the vibrancy it saves only for those who dare to find it in person.

It quite literally took my breath away, as the changing trees do every year. They are a signal that the death of winter is approaching, but it doesn't make the pigmentation any less beautiful. In fact, I feel they reflect an often overlooked truth — how the beginning of a thing can be beautiful like spring blossoms, new life on every branch and finger and how the ending of it can be so rich with thankfulness, gratitude dripping from limb and twig. The full color of the season only visible just before it ends.

Maybe that sounds sad to you, and I suppose it is. But it is also filled with a hidden sweetness. That if we are lucky, when a season comes to an end, it will do so in a way that allows us to savor every last moment with contentedness. To reply to Andy Bernard in the Office, that we do, in fact, know that we are in the good old days. The trick is knowing there will be more good old days ahead.

I've heard much said and written about hunting for beauty lately. I won't pretend to have invented the idea, but I do want to admonish you to pick up the practice. It is not an indulgent or idle task, it is a joy-producing one.

A friend recently asked for advice on how to enter into another's season of grief. There are practical things, necessary things, like meals, presence, and errands. But it got me thinking about flowers. Why do we send flowers to the hurting? There can be many reasons. It reminds a person we are thinking of them. It is the culturally common thing to do. But deep down, I think what we are doing is reminding people in all that darkness there is still beauty in the world. And we are making the hunt for it a little less difficult in a season where they probably won't have the energy to hunt themselves.

Beauty speaks to our souls. There is a reason that God didn't just make plants to produce oxygen, but he made them beautiful. A reason God didn't just promise Noah not to flood the earth, but He punctuated that promise with a rainbow, and why prisms filter light into that same image to this day. There is a reason He made the horse as majestic as it is strong, the ocean as stunning as it is vast, and the sunsets as masterful as they are practical for marking the days. He didn't have to give us beauty, but He did. Why? Why couldn't he have given us only what we need? Why was He so generous to give beauty as well?

I would argue that is because we do need beauty. Beauty stirs something in our spirits. It creates awe, and awe calls to something deeper in us than we know. It beckons the echoes of truth inside us to the surface. When we behold the layered petals of peonies, the veiny wings of butterflies, or stand at the peak of snow-capped mountaintops, we are stilled. We know there must be more. The hunt for beauty is anything but vain. It is our lifeline to the Divine. For this reason Paul tells us in Romans that He has revealed Himself through creation.

We need beauty in all seasons - it's why we celebrate marriage with white dresses and flora, why we share good meals with friends (for there is beauty in taste as well), and why we send flowers in the dark. In fact, it is in the dark night of the soul that I believe we need beauty the most, for not much can penetrate the darkness. Not words of encouragement, not gifts. But beauty speaks a language deeper than words. In beauty our souls receive well enough the truths our brains aren't ready to comprehend. It slips under the cloud and keeps us afloat until we can see the light.

In beauty, He reveals himself to us again and again, inviting us to wonder, carrying us into eternity. In that eternity, we will bask in the presence of a loving Father and all beautiful things that steal our breath now will pale in comparison to the beauty of our Husband King.