Enter In To Beauty
You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.
— Song of Solomon 4:7
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But I, through the abundance of Your steadfast love, will enter Your house.
— Psalm 5:7
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Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?
— Luke 24:26
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We do not want merely to see beauty — we want to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
— C.S. Lewis
O, beloved!
Isn’t this what we truly desire, at the very core? To be able to enter in to Beauty itself, Love Himself?
It’s as if we’re standing outside His house, longing to enter, peering in through the window expectantly, up on tiptoes; seeing through the glass the extravagant Feast of Love He is preparing, and salivating at the prospect of being invited in to dine and dance and celebrate the Victory with Him, with one another!
It’s as if we’ve been traversing more and more of the wilderness, growing ever closer to the Promised Land - our Home! - but He hasn’t given us permission to cross over the Jordan just yet.
It’s as if we get fleeting glances of His glory from time to time here, often when we least expect it, but we haven’t yet been given eyes to behold His glory in its entirety, for He is Light itself, too bright for us to gaze upon until we too have been glorified and have been made like Him, fully.
O, beloved! We see Beauty here, yes - in the trees and the clouds and the flowers, in one another. But we long for more than to just see it! We long to be swallowed up in it, fully enveloped; united with it, receiving it into ourselves, bathing in Beauty even, until we become part of it and it becomes part of us, yes?! (gentle, hopeful, expectant)
Since before the creation of the world, beloved, He has been Love - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, delighting in one another, desiring to please one another, living in perfect communion and community Together. And He is gracious enough to invite us to enter into that Love! He, like us, knows that to be able to give Love to another is the greatest gift, brings the greatest Joy! And so, He calls us - gently, tenderly, just like we like it - to come. He provides a way for us to enter in, beloved - in to perfect Beauty, perfect Peace, perfect Rest, perfect Tenderness and Gentleness and Pleasure!
But we often reject His wooing, His provision, beloved. Maybe not consciously or from a place of outright rebellion, but by thinking, believing that our way is better than His way. (gentle) C.S. Lewis says it well when he writes: ‘Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea…We are far too easily pleased.’ We are like that ignorant child, beloved, are we not? (tender) Making a mess in the mud; believing, foolishly, that the ‘here and now’ is the best there is, the best He has to give us?! But no, beloved! O, no! (suddenly quiet and O so tender, speaking slowly and deliberately and gently)…His best is yet to come.
And so we dream, beloved, we imagine! (excited) Even though we are the ignorant child in the slum who has never taken a holiday at the sea, we read of the sea, we speak of the sea, we believe in the sea - that it does exist, truly, though we have not yet seen it. And beloved?! (excitement building) We anticipate our coming holiday to the sea, the one which He has surely promised us in His Word! We anticipate entering in to His presence, to His Love, to the Feast which we can see dimly now on tiptoes through the window, beloved! The Great Celebration, the Great Wedding, the renewal and recreation of All Things! Where we will no longer merely behold Beauty, but pass into it, receive it, and enter into it, Together, for all of Time and Eternity. May He give us eyes to see. And may it be so - for His glory and for ours as well.
Amen.