The Heavens Are Telling the Glory of God
Beauty points toward truth.
And beauty is all around us if we take the time to look. Just the other day, I arrived at church a few minutes early, and so after I parked, I leaned against the side of my car for a moment, looking out toward the coast. Glancing up, I saw a spectacular cloudbank, looming in sculpted piles against the canvas of a bold blue sky. Sunlight played across the clouds; the highlights were bright white, with deeper creases a threatening steely gray; a fine gray haze drifted across the face of this massive cloud formation, adding a sense of life and motion to an otherwise still scene.
All this, in a single glance – a painter might spend hours trying to capture the scene, and call it his best work. All this, lasting at most for a few hours – and then, another vista, just as spectacular, in a different way. Each day – each hour! – gives us the artist’s work of a lifetime, free of charge, ever changing. We can’t hang on to it. A photograph wouldn’t capture the essence of it, not the same way that the eye apprehends it.
All this beauty, totally free of charge, gratuitously lovely.
The real miracle isn’t the beauty of the clouds and sky, but our perception of their beauty. If we were just animals, what use would we have of appreciating the sublimity of a wisp of cloud caught in a ray of misty sunlight? We might “read” the weather to judge whether it’s likely to rain or not, but we would not be struck in our hearts by the sense of divine presence in nature. Any animal can look up and see the sky; we human beings alone see it for what it is: beauty. The heavens do tell of the glory of God: of His reality, of His status as Creator, and of our relationship to Him. We are made in the image of our Maker, and in our own aesthetic response we discover that He is an artist, the artist of all creation.
“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).
Related posts:
Dr Holly Ordway came to Christ through reason, in the pursuit of truth. "In your hearts honor Christ as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 15).
She writes about her journey from atheism to orthodox Christian faith in her book "Not God's Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith" (Moody Publishers).
