Friends, "Searching for Spring" releases in one week! The following is an excerpt from the first chapter, which gives you a small taste of the book and what it's about. Preorder a copy of the book and redeem your receipt for preorder goodies before next Monday when they go away!
Life
can be hard for many reasons, but I think one of the primary ways we make it
harder on ourselves is that we struggle to define beauty properly or in a way
that leads to wonder—to God. We define beauty in ways that are finite and,
often, self-serving or self-gratifying. We are a people content with calling a
purse or cityscape beautiful, ascribing ultimate value to decaying and lifeless
things. Our definition of beauty limits, confines, and destroys our own joy,
because decaying or lifeless things cannot produce unending beauty nor can they
transform a life.
What if beauty could actually be
found in the very things our skewed hearts deem ugly? What if all that we
resist—suffering, confession, brokenness, loneliness, and death—were the very
things in process of becoming beautiful? All of these experiences are painful,
but each can produce or lead us to the unexpected beauty of perseverance, hope,
redemption, heaven, and God himself.
That
is precisely the point: God is beautiful. All he’s created points back to him,
reflecting who he is and what he’s like. Forgiveness and reconciliation,
justice and mercy, peace and joy—a life transformed points back to him. He is
beauty hiding in plain sight, leaving clues as to his whereabouts through both
his artistic words ("And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was
light.") and his written words. He calls us to come and seek, so we can come and see, so we may discover how
everything—everything—he touches
turns beautiful in time to reflect his own beauty. That means me and my life,
and you and your life, even the most hopeless and dark parts.
When
we go past the cicada's design and the transformed life in search of God, we
find a beauty that drives out despair and adds color to muted, mundane days. He
in turn hands us beauty to fight hopelessness in the difficulties of life, and
he offers beauty as a present medicine for our souls.
Oh how
we need this medicine!
We
need it not only to battle despair but we also need it to wake from our numb
distraction. We’re made to be beauty seekers, but too often we’re merely
surviving. We are restless from a lack of wonder, and sometimes we're pierced
by more than just restlessness: depression, anxiety, apathy, bitterness, and
hopelessness. We exist in a crafted busyness where we attempt to silence our
heart’s craving. What is the point of seeking beauty anyway? Why awaken our
hearts to the risk of emotion when life's pain is too deep?
Because
life's pain is deep, and beauty is the most potent weapon we have with which to
fight back.
But here’s why we prefer numb hearts rather
than alive ones: beauty is not immediate. It often unveils itself slowly,
through much waiting, much seeking, and sometimes much heartache.
The
cicada and the wise man tell us this as well. The wise man said, “God has made
all things beautiful in time”
(Ecclesiastes 3:11). The cicada proves this truth by waiting seven years before
continuing his story, which happens to be prompt reproduction and death. In the
cosmic game of Hide and Seek, it seems there is a big picture element to
beauty; one we must embrace in order to find it.
Because
the most beautiful beauty—a transformed life—is not immediate, we must be
patient, lifetime seekers, not only mining our past and present circumstances
for beauty but also cultivating a hope for future beauty.
I find
it difficult to fully comprehend beauty in the present anyway, for I can only
see the present through a glass dimly. In a moment where I try to etch a joyful
occasion on my heart, I can’t quite wrap myself completely around it. When I’m
holding my husband’s hand across the table on our wedding anniversary, I'm
overcome with joy at being married to such a man. But then a little bit of fear
creeps in. What if he’s taken away from me? What if the future holds dire and
difficult things for us? I tell myself to enjoy the moment, but pure beauty has
been eclipsed by my fear. In the present moment, I cannot escape my
distractible emotions.
This
is why beauty needs time. We comprehend and value true beauty most significantly
over time. Once again, come with me to my anniversary table, as I’m holding the
hands of my beloved husband. As he and I discuss the years we’ve had together,
recalling stories of our newlywed days and the rough patches along the way to
18 years, I see the beauty of our love so clearly in time past. I recognize how
the struggles firmed our commitment to one another. I rejoice in all the Lord
has helped us overcome and how he's used our partnership for his glory.
There
is no fear to eclipse the beauty this time, only concrete years displaying very
real beauty that makes me hopeful for the future and happy in the present.
And so
it is with God and why he doesn't make all things beautiful immediately. Before
the unveiling of the complete transformation he's made in us, we have the
opportunity that will vanish when all is made beautiful: the opportunity for
faith. Our faith pleases him so, and this is not a faith built upon happy
emotions. This is a faith built upon something concrete: what beauty he's
already orchestrated in time and what beauty he says he will make in time
beyond. We may not be able to see and comprehend clearly all of what God is
doing in the present, but we can always mine the past and the future for
treasures.
This
is the pattern of Scripture, really. In the Old Testament, God repetitiously
requires his people to build altars, recall stories of his acts to their
children, and celebrate feasts that mark the miracles he’s done on their
behalf. Over and over, he says to them, “Remember.” They were to remember how
God made freedom from slavery and provision from lack so they’d trust him in
their present.
Then
God’s refrain through the prophets became, “Look forward.”
They
were to look forward to a perfect deliverer and forever rescuer, when God would
make beauty from their ashes, so that they might trust him with those ashes in
their present state.
In the
New Testament, the pattern of the Old Testament emerges. After the gospels, the
writers point back to the death and resurrection of Christ and then forward to
his future coming, all so that we’d look at the past with gratefulness and awe,
the future with faith, and the present with eyes wide open to beauty and hope.
Look
back. God has created and God has come.
Look
ahead. God will come again.
A
question emerges, no matter where we stand in the timeline of history: And so,
having looked behind and ahead, how can you live now in light of who He is?
In all
of it, the pulse of the beauty of God has played in seen and unseen places, and
we’ll spend the rest of this book playing in a big game of Hide and Seek. We'll do this by discovering the heartbeat of God that's
moved him to action on our behalf. We'll find out how he's still acting,
working to bring all of time to culmination when all things will be made right
and beauty will be forever. As we look at how God has acted and is acting, we
can then know what we must do and how we must live in response. This is a book
that describes how faith—waiting for All Things Beautiful—is lived out in real
life.
