beauty on Good and Evil

The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Goodness is beauty in the best estate.

How goodness heightens beauty!

One day when George MacDonald, the great Scottish preacher and writer, was talking with his son, the conversation turned to heaven and the prophets’ version of the end of all things. “It seems too goo...

[Beauty] “is goodness made manifest to the senses.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.

If the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the . . . unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar...

In the epic conclusion to the Narnia Chronicles, C.S. Lewis attempts to express the absolute joy that will come as our earthly lives come to an end and we are reunited with our God for all of eternity...

​If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in the home, there will be o...

Two Latin words are used to describe useful and beautiful things: util and frui. Util means useful, beneficial, helpful. Frui means enjoyable, pleasurable, and delightful. The created world is both fr...

While brokenness is difficult, it’s beautiful because it makes God look good. Your natural gifts draw attention to yourself while brokenness draws attention to your Lord. With this in mind, power is d...

If your salvation does not include living with God in beauty, truth, and goodness, it’s going to be a very dry haul. And so much of our difficulty today for Christians in this world, and for the world...

In their excellent book on reconciliation, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice share a story about how small acts of beauty, done well, can lead to reconciliation: A friend told us of visiting a very l...

O God, whose reason rules the world, who formed the starry heights above, timeless, time’s chain far forth you hurled, unmoved, gave all things power to move. Prevailed on by no outside cause to fashi...

It is not your outward appearance that you should beautify, but your soul, adorning it with good works.

How great and glorious You are, O God. There is no one like You. You transform our weakness into strength. You forgive our stubbornness and arrogance, and fill us with Your generous wisdom. You turn o...

Leader: The mighty one, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. People: Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. Leader: Our God comes...

Recently, when I was in London, I went to the National Gallery. It was a weekday, but it was still crowded with people wearing headsets, staring at famous paintings, listening to a narrator explain th...

Lifeless are our prayers. Dry and brittle are our spirits. Like Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, we are a people without the sinews of goodness, the flesh of holiness, and the breath of righteousness. W...

Gracious God, for the goodness and beauty of creation we thank you. For the way your creation nurtures and inspires us, we are grateful. Yet, the more we pay attention to the world, the more we see i...

"God's joy," said by the Persian mystic Rumi, "moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rain water down into flower bed. As roses up from ground. Now it looks ...

God of the heavens and the earth, Giver of sun and showers, wind and calm: We praise You for Your grace and power, Your beauty, grace and care. You sustain us daily, and encourage us constantly. Than...

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

O Lord, my every sense, member, faculty, affection, is a snare to me. I can scarce open my eyes but I envy those above me, or despise those below. I covet the honor and riches of the mighty, and a...

We have been created and redeemed for the eternal ecstasy of an interpersonal immersion in the triune God, seeing infinite Beauty face to face.

George MacDonald, The Scottish author who had a profound effect on C.S. Lewis among others, once wrote a letter to his father about what he believed would be a great obstacle to his faith; that once h...

I think the mistake most of us make about beauty is that we expect it to be pretty—to please us with its proportions, its balance, its harmony, its rhyme. If those are your requirements, I doubt I wil...

May the Lord of love keep us all in peace, transform our conflict into the beauty of his grace, and give us joyful hearts to do his will. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A...

Desire lies at the heart of who God made us to be, who we are at our core. Desire is both our greatest frailty and the mark of our highest beauty. Our desire completes us as we become One with our Lov...

Gracious God, thank you for the beauty of this world. Sometimes we can get wrapped up in its pain and brokenness so much that we miss its wonders. Today we pause to thank you for the beauty of your cr...