Skip to main content

2020: A Year of Beauty

2020 is upon us. Let's face it, we all expect this year to be ugly. Violence and unrest are spreading throughout the world. Tribalism of all sorts is on the rise. In America we enter the new year in the midst of a political maelstrom. The President has been impeached in what is potentially the most partisan era of American history since the Civil War, and to top it all off this is an election year. Public discourse on any issue seems to have vanished, and sadly even many Christians seem swept up in the taking of sides and blaming others that has taken hold in our society.

Ugly would be the nice way of saying how we all expect this year to go.

With such ugliness and nastiness comes a unique opportunity: a chance for followers of Christ to let their light shine in this present darkness. We have an opportunity, nay a responsibility, to show the people around us Christ. It is our duty and honor to live out our calling as peacemakers. We are called to be beautiful in a time of ugliness and despair.

Beauty is something our world desperately needs. Beauty, true beauty, brings people together. We see glimpses of it all the time. We see a glimmer of true beauty when we see a work of art or listen to a powerful song. It is that quality that we recognize in things or people as fundamentally good and desirable. The thing about something truly beautiful that is so intriguing is that it points to something beyond itself, something we all desperately need; God.

God is beautiful. I'd even go as far as to say that God is transcendent beauty itself; the very source of all things beautiful and the standard by which we determine beauty. God is desirable. God is good. The truly beautiful things of this world all point to God in their own small ways, each according to their measure. 

As Christians we are called to be beautiful, or full of beauty. This means that we are called to be full of God and constantly pointing the world towards him. This means not getting caught up in the partisan bickering of the politics of our age, but being peacemakers who always look for the truth no matter what side it may be on. It means a willingness to listen, a heart that is open to all people, and a fervent desire share beauty wherever we can.

Instead of letting 2020 be an ugly year full of bickering, hate, and turmoil let us strive to make it a year of goodness, truth, and beauty. As it says in Romans 12:21, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Do not give in to ugliness, but overcome that ugliness with the beauty that points to God.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, the day that we are supposed to celebrate all the things we are thankful for. It is a time of family reunions, football, and turkey eating. I sincerely pray that each and every one of you has a good day today. I'll admit that being thankful has not been easy for me this year. As pretty much all of you know, my mother passed away December of last year. Though she had been in the hospital for months, we were not expecting it. In fact I was sure she would be finally able to come home within a matter of weeks. Instead she peacefully passed on into the arms of Jesus, whom she loved more dearly than anyone else. As you can imagine, the entire family was heart broken. After what can easily be described as the worst Christmas ever, I returned to home to Illinois. It was here that I finally broke down. I spent the next months doing everything except being thankful. I cursed God, wept, screamed, begged to have her back, and was generally not the nicest person to be...
3 comments
Read more

What is Theology?

Greetings all! For the first true post I have decided to cover what will be one of the defining aspects of this blog; theology. I know that when I was growing up theology wasn't a word that was used in the churches I attended. In fact I don't recall ever hearing the word until I was in high school, and even then it was used negatively like theology was a bad thing. Theology is inseparable from Bible study, Christian living, and being a disciple of Jesus in general. It is an indispensable part of being a Christian. The thing is we haven't always treated it that way. We have allowed our theology to fall by the wayside, believing it to be useless or not appropriate. So what is theology exactly, and why is it so important? What is Theology? The word theology simply means "the study of God." The goal of theology is to reveal who God is, and when we know God we also come to know ourselves, sin, the world, and so on. What we've done in the past (and this may ju...
1 comment
Read more

The Name of God

In the book of Exodus we are introduced to many important elements that appear throughout the rest of the Bible. This is where we meet Moses, the first prophet sent to the nation of Israel. It is in Exodus that we first learn of the tabernacle and God's intention of living among his people. It is in Exodus that we witness the first Passover, which is the type of what is to come in Jesus. There are several other events that we could look to in Exodus, but there is one in particular that is very important that we have largely ignored; God revealing his name. We typically only refer to God by his titles. We call him Lord, Father, Judge, King, and God (yes, God is technically a title). I would like to emphasize now that there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. In fact I would say that it is right for us recognize the power and authority of God in what we call him. What today's post is about is the fact that we have forgotten or even ignored the fact that God reveals his n...
1 comment
Read more