- He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. -
This is a strange idea to tack on to the back of the last verses we’ve read. Really, this whole paragraph is strange.
Go. Give it a read. In the light of what we’ve been discussing through this book and the arguments revisited here, I think you’ll find it strange too.
Finished? Then you know the previous two verses deal with the gain form our work and the unhappy business God has given us.
Better, you’ve seen the next verses talking about the good we can accomplish in life and that our joy is to be found in toil, eating, and drinking.
These whole five verses feel as if they are wrestling with themselves.
It’s not presented as a continuous A to B to C argument. We are dealing with the pieces as they come to us.
It’s probably similar, if we take the time to pay attention to ourselves, how we attempt to rationalize ourselves out of our own struggles.
“I know I need to speak up more at work, but I don’t want to be perceived as arrogant, but I don’t want bad ideas to lead in our classrooms, but…”
It’s a whirlpool
That’s how we experience things in our life – all at once, pulling us down.
So, why does beauty show up here?
Beauty is a terrible thing. For starters, it allows for discrimination. This is not as good as that.
Did you see my trick? I swapped out the word beautiful and good. That’s a lie we play on ourselves, confusing physical beauty and goodness.
Devil’s come with smiles.
We know this, and yet we all prefer beautiful sunsets to fish guts, smiles to misaligned backs, and symmetry to potholes.
What’s my point in all of this? Beauty is a judge, and you need that judge to live.
Pretend you’re taking your child to a daycare. What do the holes in the wall, the bad paint job, and the crooked clock all indicate?
That the people here don’t care to keep up appearances, most likely. If this is how they treat their space, how will they treat your child?
Your ability to discriminate protects you.
Now, imagine the most beautiful object you could ever behold. You probably can’t come up with an image, but you probably conjured a word.
God.
He is a transcendent form of beauty; one that is both physically and spiritually beautiful. A rightness fills Him by definition.
Now, this God exists outside of time. To me, that means time is a limited window with which to see God.
Like in a mirror dimly.
However, I’m not a divine creature, I can’t see but with time as a reference, my present, past, and future.
So, in order to meet me in my fallen state, God touches time with His divine beauty.
That means absolutely everything in my life lines up perfectly, and I never experience a spot of trouble.
That’s a ridiculous lie.
What I find is that the pain in my life is worthwhile, in time. The pattern of my existence actually has a purpose, in time. That the long years spent in prayer produce fruit, in time.
The time getting there, well honestly, it can feel like Hell.
In time, I seem to trust more and more that that Hell is merely a tunnel.
The light beyond? Beautiful.