Spring is here, and in America that means people are getting ready for baseball - the crack of the bat, the graceful double play, the speed, the timing, the excitement, the adrenaline! Ah, the glory and the splendor of humanity in the springtime of life!
We recognize the beauty inherent in baseball players who, even at a very young age, can actually watch a small spheroid thrown toward them at high speed by an opposition player, and swing a bat around with their legs, hips, arms, and wrists all working together to hit the fast-moving object into the field of play. That the eyes, brain, and other body parts can work so well together – adjusting to curve balls, sliders, and other pitches over different parts of home plate - is really quite amazing.
There is no machine that could replace a baseball batter - yet the human body is said to have evolved by chance and natural selection!?
Adding to the glorious experience of this time of year is the bursting forth of life, as trees, meadows, and flowering plants of all kinds put out new leaves in multiple fresh shades of green, with wildflowers and other blossoms adding all kinds of splendor.
The biological “machinery”, which allows us to take this all in and to participate in the creation, is really quite amazing. For example, the human eye makes use of muscular contractions and dilations of the iris to allow more or less light through the lens, and involves a great deal of complicated biochemistry. In just one of the cellular processes of the eye, light detector cells use specialty proteins to transport other “calming” proteins along skeletal cell formations from a “holding area” to where the light-detecting proteins are. They “pick up” these proteins with a special “sticky” fat. In effect, the light detecting cells work in split seconds like a very efficient factory, using motorized transport along internal train tracks to pick up and carry with glue a calming agent to where it is needed. Information taken in by the eye is sent to the brain, where it is processed through similarly wondrous cellular and biochemical communication to generate commands to all the other parts of the body. Eyes, brain, hips, legs, feet, hands, arms, and many other parts can all work together to perform amazing feats – like crushing the ball over the fence. This is a thrilling and “beautiful” sight for the fans.
We rightly appreciate the created beauty that God gave us. It is ultimately an appreciation of perfection – a perfection which derives from the truth of God, who alone is perfect. Perfection is the absolute truth. And it is beautiful! As the Romantic poet John Keats wrote, “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty”.
This is why nobody, not even the worst perpetrators of the worst crimes, would honestly describe immoral acts as “beautiful”. No, because in fact they are ugly and disgusting. The morally deformed is not beautiful. Here is where the truth of Biblical Christianity also shines through uniquely because not only do we believe in the Most High and Holy God, Creator Almighty, who established His original perfect order. But we define human nature as inherently flawed because of Adam and Eve’s decision to disobey God in the Garden of Eden. Understanding the truth about man’s depravity is satisfying because it is true and makes our redemption all the more lovely!
We are rebels at heart, and the sin thereof has infected and polluted this once-perfect creation. We are all broken images of our Creator, and the whole of creation itself is now flawed, in league through our fallen nature with our spiritual adversary, Satan, and his host of evil spirits.
Therefore, as amazing as the human body is, it is subject to “disease”. Now think about this word for a moment. It is a compound word, “dis – ease”. The ease with which professional baseball players execute their game is a beauty to watch because their game is near perfection. Similarly, a healthy human body, which functions with a good immune system and biochemistry, is not only at “ease” but working near perfectly - and beautiful to behold. But dis - ease plagues us, coming as it does with imperfection.
Here we are getting to the spiritual root of things. God’s moral perfection through the Word and Spirit gave birth to the physical creation. As we have previously discussed, the fundamental power upholding all things is the Lord, and the power that He commands is spiritual at root (Hebrews 1:3, John 4:24).
Divine beauty is characteristic of God and is vastly superior to even the very best of created splendors, so that our great calling is to dwell in His temple “to inquire of Him and to gaze upon His beauty” as the Psalmist expresses his desire. The Lord is the purest loveliness and the very essence of joy and wisdom, perfect in all His ways without end. So it is no wonder that saints throughout the centuries have experienced His inexpressible delight in worship and in prayer, even though veiled in this fallen world. This is the Biblical Creator Almighty! – a wonderful, awesome Personality who invites all of us to share eternal life with Him in glory, through the Savior Jesus Christ the Lord!
Do you trust in Jesus Christ for your salvation?
Login To Leave Comment