Add to the Beauty

Unintentionally, I began writing an album review in my journal this morning, because the songs on Sara Groves' album Add to the Beauty are so closely knit thematically. The title cut says "this is grace, an invitation to be beautiful... and I want to add to the beauty." All of the songs are about beautiful things that can't be explained other than through grace. It's a truly inspiring album, and inspired me to seek God's beauty today.

And so I have. It's been a good day. I thought about His artistry this morning, and wrote a poem about it. It made me think about the fundamentals of art. I had to actually look them up online. In case you're curious, here's the poem I wrote:

There is a beauty
In all His processes
There is a harmony
In demand and supply
There is a purpose
And a poetry of motion
When a flower drinks the rain and hails the sky.

There is an artist
Who is the living Light
His works engage the heart
And His word gives sight
He mixes pigments
On a pallette of the spectrum
The details of His masterpieces fill me with delight.

Not bad for sitting on the porch on a rainy morning. It felt like the perfect way to spend my time.

In the midst of my reveries I checked the headlines for today. Hamas vs. Fatah vs. Israel and the US. International intervention? War, scandal, hatred, deceit, death. I had to ask myself, is it puerile to live my life wanting to add to the beauty in times when it doesn't seem like there's even any beauty to begin with?

So I read along in Genesis, where I left my bookmark at the begining of the story of Joseph's trials. His brothers hated him, almost left him for dead, then sold him instead. Awful. But he was sold into an Egyptian official's house, where God was with him. Then the official's wife wanted him so badly, and her pride was so injured when he refused to offend his master that way, that she accused him of rape and had him sent to prison. Terrible. But God was with Joseph there, too. I know the rest of the story; he was kept in jail for a time, until he began to interpret dreams. Eventually he rose to become second in command to Pharoah, and had the responsibility of managing Egypt's reserves in order to get them successfully through a famine. Because of him, many people lived who would otherwise have died, including his entire family, and as part of that provision, his entire was reconciled. Reconciliation, favor, provision, from an awful story about hatred, demise, deceit, and jealousy.

I may not understand what's going around the world, and it may be hard to see beauty in it. Frankly, God's beauty is more and more astounding to me the more I look at the world. Even when I look at the world, though, I know that somehow He is working all things out for His glory, which is in turn for my good. There is a process to it, but I believe, still, that God has beautiful things in store.

For better or for worse, this is really as deep as I get. I'm not trying to make commentary about world events, I'm just building a worldview that incorporates beauty and art. A friend e-mailed me this link to a group thinking through how art relates to God: http://www.thegauisproject.org/. I'm sure they've done some better thinking on the subject but I have yet to read it through.