shalom: May 2018

Spring has come. Everyday in my one-hour walk to school and home, I saw a more and more vibrant and colorful world as the weather gets warmer. I walked the same route in winter, but now I have a completely different mood as the outside scenery changes.

I can almost feel the strength of many lives under the soil impatiently wait to break the earth and come out. Every sunshine they intake and every raindrop they drink have become their accumulated energy under the soil ready to break out. I never get to catch the moment when they break out, because it’s always in the dark when no one sees them!

Today when I walk in the street full of flowers and trees, I can’t agree more with Jesus’ aesthetic values that “these flowers are more glorious than Solomon in all his glory”. I stopped and stared at one flower, observing its color, texture, shape, and design. My heart is shaking and crying, who can create such glorious and beautiful thing? How did he create it? If I did not know the creator like I used to, I would leave with many question marks and regret, and didn’t really know how to appreciate them! Such beauty! Who can comprehend and connect to it unless we know the creator behind it? Although I know God, but I still find it hard to process and understand such beauty! I often felt a deep quest to connect to them more, so that I can understand them, because they are more than just beautiful! When I read Tim’s paper on the beauty of nature and the spiritual world behind it, I suddenly found a good perspective to appreciate these incomparable natural beauties and a good connection to the nature.

First, the findings of C.S. Lewis that there is a meaning behind the objective matter that carried such beauty was inspired by George MacDonald’s perspective that there is a Holiness in nature.

Second, we can make a connection between the physical world and the spiritual world through natural beauty and the meaning behind it. “George MacDonald wanted the beauty that God expressed in creation to be recognized as a divine signpost to God’s eternal reality. ” I felt blocked in my heart if I can’t make connection between the natural world and the spiritual world. Now that I read about these authors’ perspectives, I can learn to relate the same way; I see God’s holiness and purity in his creations!!! This draws me closer to Jesus, I felt his Presence, Holiness and Purity when seeing and touching these pure and glorious beauties. It’s even more vivid when the Holy Spirit reminded me of what Jesus said about his creations (e.g. They sprout and grow silently in the dark that the sowers knows not how). My heart is deeply comforted when I’m connected to these beauties by seeing through their invisible background.

Third, the German romantic writer Novalis who had a big impact on George MacDonald has reinforced the idea of the beauty of nature as a vision of the heavenly reality. And God made these beauties transient so that we do not stop in it but expect and hope for the greater perfect and eternal beauty in heaven! Novalis even said:“ We are closer to things invisible than to things visible.” But why many still live in the “we are closer to visible things than invisible” reality?

Last, not only do I have many questions about how to comprehend the static beauty; when I see the dynamic beauty, such as animals, pandas, bunnies, puppies, I often ask, what character/personality of God can I see from them? How cute is the creator who creates such cute animals? How did Jesus create pandas, puppies and bunnies? Now, I can’t help to laugh, the image of a very funny Jesus appeared.