Have you
ever known something intellectually but have a light bulb moment when it moved
from “knowledge” into “belief”? This happened for me the other weekend as I was
in the kitchen sipping coffee… probably the fact that I had time
to think because I didn’t need to do other work for once helped with that.
I’ve
always thought of God as a creator/organizer/guy-in-charge, but Thalia helped
me to see him as a loving father. After
Thalia went home, it has been challenging to find a reason to want
to be here. Far
from being a negative question, I've found it a freeing one, as it has
stripped everything down to its barest importance, contingent on how
God uses it in my life. I have been asking God what the point of this life is, and
slowly, He’s given me different answers. It began with loving others to Him
and, in this particular light-bulb moment, in creating beauty in us. Gradually He is broadening my concept of who He is as He answers who I am in Him.
I’ve not really thought
of God as an artist before. You don’t ask an artist why he does something that
seems illogical to the viewer-of-the-process. It’s art! This reminds me of the prophet’s
showing Israel a view of God as a potter, and of Job being questioned if he
understood God’s motivations. If anyone is beautiful as a core quality, it is
God, and as Paul mentions, He is forming us into His image and we will be gloriously
transformed: “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory
of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory,
even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Cor 3:18
This makes life have a point,
not only for others, in a bringing-those-away-from-him in, but also in a
continuing beautifying process past that point. I need this hope. Becoming
beautiful in the very real, God-like sense of the word is a worthy cause, not
only inherently, but because of who we will be beautiful to. And, having His
approval, after letting life transform us here, makes the transforming part of
the process just that: a process, and not an ending of life.
I find this
impacts the way I approach life: instead of being so concerned with doing things
"perfectly" to achieve a "perfect" end result, I can see that it’s more about
letting the things I go through transform me. Maybe another way to say this is
that it’s more about letting the things we go through perfect us, rather than
us perfecting those things. God uses the imperfections of life to create more
of His perfection in us.
God is a beautiful artist.
