Divine Beauty
“Part of learning to see involves the humility to have things shown to us.” (Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind)
The story of the artist turned missionary, Lilias Trotter, is told in the previous entry (Divine Reflection) as I reflected on her life lived in alignment with Matthew 6:33: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you”.
Lilias enjoyed all the temporally beautiful things in life, but it was on a desolate mission field in rather adverse conditions that beauty truly manifested itself. She put aside the comforts that wealth provided, laid down the opportunity to become a world-renowned artist, and she turned her full attention to applying the truth of Matthew 6:33 in living out her calling to a rather obscure life in the service of the Lord.
As the story is told, “She saw beauty everywhere. To read her journals and see her sketches and paintings is to see the overflow of a heart enamored with the world she inhabited. Even in the toughest conditions, she marveled at the lilies that grew from the desert floor and saw the kindness and grace of God in every petal. The natural beauty happening around her reminded her that the Lord was at work. The thought that He was working through her filled her heart with joy. During one particularly difficult time in her work in Algiers, Lilias took her diary into her garden to pray. She wrote, “A bee comforted me very much this morning. He was hovering above some blackberry sprays just touching flowers here and there, yet all unconsciously life, life, life was left behind at every touch”.
As the author explains, “Service to the Lord is never wasted, even if people don’t see it. God sees it and uses it. This wasn’t just Lilia’s hope; it was her confidence. She said, ‘Let us dare to test God’s resources. Let us ask Him to kindle in us, and to keep aflame that passion for the impossible, that God might make us delight in it with Him, because God doesn’t find anything impossible. Nor should we. And we delight in it with Him until the day we shall see it by His grace transformed into fact’.” (Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind)
In the words of the Lord through the prophet Malachi, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and put Me to the test now in this,” says the LORD of armies, “if I do not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows” (Malachi 3:10). May we be giving of ourselves to God fully and unblemished, testing (trusting) Him as Lilias did, and looking to bear witness to the opening of the windows of heaven and the overflowing blessings that follow. Oh the blessing of walking in humility before the Lord and having eyes to see His divine beauty everywhere. Lilias experienced His beauty, and even in her darkest hour as she lay in a hospital bed with the reality of death imminent, she professed, “Yes, I see many, many beautiful things”.
