Yesterday we continued our series Echoes of a Voice - a sermon series taken, in part, from N.T. Wright's Simply Christian. It is a series that explores the universal longings of the human spirit; longings for
relationship, for spirituality, and justice. Longings that are within each of
us. Longings that we believe point beyond the natural world to a
transcendent, personal and loving God.
Yesterday we explored our universal longing for beauty. The
way in which we are moved by a sunset, or a work of art, or by looking into the
eyes of a little baby.
We all long for and appreciate beauty and yet beauty, like
justice, slips through our fingertips.
It seems for every snow-covered mountain there is a hole
somewhere being filled with human debris. We are captivated by the sound of
waves hitting the shore and yet terrified of hurricanes and tsunamis. And for
every beautiful piece of art or clothing or music there is a corporation
waiting to strip it down for mass-production or an advertiser anxious to use it
to sell us something else.
We are struck by the beauty of our planet but we are also very
aware of its ugliness.
Why?
GK Chesterton viewed this world as a cosmic shipwreck. A
person’s search for meaning resembles a sailor who awakens on a deserted island
surrounded simultaneously by wreckage and treasure.
In Romans 8 Paul helps us appreciate natural beauty. The
world is full of beauty, but the beauty is incomplete. The beauty we see in
creation is part of a larger whole that will be accomplished when God renews
the heaven and earth. The reason the world is so beautiful is that it is
straining forward.
We live between creation and new creation, and as Christians
we are called to new creativity. We are called to anticipate the new creation;
to provide signs and foretastes of the coming kingdom; to add to the beauty.