For the Beauty of the Earth,
For the glory of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies.
Lord of all to thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
Elliot Sanford Pierpont
I’ve been sitting on this blog post for a week, terrified that I was not speaking truthfully. I started out writing about birds–about the surprise of finding forgotten or overlooked beauty and delighting in the Creator of it. I do think what I was writing was true, but I was in conflict with my own heart as it grieved. Now I think I’ve got it right.
I am a self-proclaimed beauty-seeker. The tagline for this very website is something that became sort of a motto for myself as I began writing in college: Found in Christ, Finding Him in everything. It truly is my heart’s cry. I see the Lord in the vineyards around my neighborhood and remember Jesus as the True Vine. I see Jesus when I throw together the three meager ingredients of flour, salt, and water and watch as they turn into bread that will sustain. My day is filled with prayers as I expectantly wait to see Jesus in everything.
And I usually do.
But this year, it’s been particularly difficult.
When life is not beautiful
The hard part of becoming a beauty-seeker is balancing hope with the present reality. It’s seeking the glimpses of Heaven, yet never painting the brokenness of the world to be what it actually isn’t. I’ve learned this this year after losing three friends who were like family. One I found out about only a week ago.
Death is disturbing, not beautiful. I don’t care how many times Disney tries to reframe it: death in and of itself is not beautiful. We who are too used to the world’s patterns of shatteredness will rationalize it as “natural” and “part of life,” but it’s flat not. Death was never God’s perfect plan for humanity, and I think accepting that theological reality is a necessary part of grieving well. The wrong-ness of death is why Jesus, just moments from pulling him from a grave didn’t just stand dry-eyed when his friend Lazarus died. He wept (John 11:35).
I knew these things, yet through all three losses, I was tempted to beautify death– to offer platitudes to grieving people in the name of comfort because I felt responsible to make things okay. And to be completely honest, I didn’t trust that God was interested in doing that.
All the sad things untrue
Recently I was listening to a podcast on anxiety that stopped me in my tracks. Speaking about his book The Anxiety Opportunity, author and theologian at Duke Divinity school, Curtis Chang explained that while anxiety is the fear of loss, the hope of the Resurrection in Jesus Christ makes it possible for one to endure anxiety because it ensures that all loss will be restored:
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)
Though the conversation focused on anxiety and not death, I found this point to be the very thing my heart needed to honestly grieve death before the Lord.
He shall restore.
The resurrection is the answer to death because Jesus’ victory is the death of death. Do you see how much emotional and psychological freedom comes from this truth? In the light of the Resurrection, we are free to let the losses truly be losses because we know a God who will restore.
In the light of the Resurrection, we are free to let the losses truly be losses because we know a God who will restore.
The Christian life does not guarantee the prevention of loss. It guarantees it (John 16:33). And some things will simply not be become fully beautiful in this life. Some people won’t get healed. The glimpses of glory and beauty we get in this life are all sweet visions of what await, but saying that everything will be beautiful in this life is misleading.
But God. How often I forget that it will be worth the wait to see what He is preparing for us. Sin wrecked this world bad, but the cross was an offensive move that tore apart every barrier standing between the King and his people. Jesus is not standing passively by in our pain. Just as God heard Israel’s cries from slavery, he will redeem us from the pain, the ultimate being separation from Him. The cross that cost him so much reminds us of the ugliness of death, but the empty tomb reminds us that God restores everything in the end.
This is no empty promise, no flimsy sales pitch, no bait and switch. It is something strong I can lean on even as I weep.
We can grieve fully because we know that the Beautiful Savior will restore everything to beauty once more.
Kayley Chartier 