Searching For Spring By Christine HooverSample

Day Two

Hiding in Plain Sight

Scripture: Romans 8:28

We think we know beauty when we see it, and we’re sure we know where to seek it. Art in the gallery. Carefully written words. And especially the natural world. We flock to beaches and mountains en masse, longing for the wonder of things we didn’t make. We marvel at the views from our mountaintop perch, love the sand between our toes, and even those among us who don’t believe in God seek peace in the very place that shouts about him—nature. 

But what if beauty could also be found in the things our hearts deem ugly? What if all that we resist—suffering, confession, brokenness, loneliness, death—were in process of becoming beautiful? 

God offers beauty as a medicine for our souls. Oh, how we need this medicine! We need it not only to battle despair but also to wake from our numb distraction. We’re made to be beauty seekers but too often we’re merely surviving. We are restless from a lack of wonder. Sometimes more than restlessness pierces us as we face depression, anxiety, apathy, or hopelessness. We exist in a crafted busyness where we attempt to silence our heart’s craving.

Beauty is the most potent weapon we have with which to fight back against the restlessness and the discouragement. It lies not just in the seen but in the unseen: virtuous acts done for a stranger, true words spoken, unexplained generosity, forgiveness in the face of hate, purity in a decadent world, determination and joy in the midst of suffering.

All that God has created points back to him. Forgiveness and reconciliation, justice and mercy, peace and joy—a life transformed—point back to him. He is beauty hiding in plain sight, leaving clues as to his whereabouts through both his artistic words in nature and his written words. He calls us to come and seek, so we can come and see, so we may discover how everything—everything—he touches turns beautiful in time to reflect his own beauty. That means me and my life, and you and your life, even the most hopeless and dark parts.

These clarion moments of beauty prick us awake from our routines and our numbness. For fleeting moments, we see what’s hidden in plain sight and something inside us whispers: there is meaning to life; there is beauty unfolding. 

Why is beauty a weapon in times of discouragement?