Genesis 1:1, 10, 18, 21, 25 NIV
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…And God saw that it was good.”
“Above all, beauty is deeply and profoundly bound up with God’s very being; simply put, God is beauty itself. More than a few passages in the Hebrew Scriptures bear witness to this. In the Exodus narrative, the two names that God gives to Moses testify to the fact that God’s very being, which ultimately no name can contain, is a plenitude or excess of formal content, an endless reservoir of the power to exist. If beauty provides a thing its capacity to be what it is as an object that attracts others to itself, then God as the origin of all such things is supremely full of beauty, or supremely beautiful, or simply beauty itself. As such, it is God’s very self that becomes the source of all attraction demonstrating how God’s revelation of his identity also carries with it the idea that God’s being, as beauty itself, is a power that calls all things to attraction.” (Sammon, Brendan Thomas. Called to Attraction: An Introduction to the Theology of Beauty Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition)
And this extravagant goodness, or beauty, takes form in the gospels. It’s the oversupply of wine at Cana. It’s the welcome Jesus shows to outcasts and sinners. It is the undeserved forgiveness won on the cross. It is Jesus coming alongside the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Just as God’s beauty is good, it is also active and dynamic.
Prayer: Lord, we confess that you are the origin of all things full of beauty, beautiful and simply beauty itself. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let’s sing, “Psalm 139” by Shane & Shane (click here)
-AW
