How Beauty Brings Healing and Hope
Walking my own healing journey, often I find encouragement in the healing journeys of others. A friend shared a quote with me which was like the balm of Gilead to my parched and wounded soul. More than that, it led me on another path to healing I had not considered: how beauty brings healing and Hope.
“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Often stilling my restlessness and calming my anxiety, nature brings perspective. With trees taller than my giants and glittering dew drops in the morning sun brighter than the dimness housed in my heart, my view expands.
Certainly, breathtaking views from mountain tops or trekking through the wonders of a Canandian forest revealed their own unique beauty. But even a simple stroll through my gardens revealed the many ways beauty brings healing and hope.
Colors no brush can render, design captured nowhere else, all lay within our reach, if we have the time.
Though in the midst of one of the most colorful and alive seasons of the year, heavy with sorrow, I saw little, much less engaged the beauty waiting for me.
But Emerson’s quote begged, yea commanded me notice beauty, and in the noticing find healing and Hope.
Grabbing my camera, I headed out on a search for beauty. Admittedly, my first excursion yielded little, as I remained turned inward, like so many of the unopened buds I observed.
But little by little, apprehended by beauty, something shifted the tiniest little bit.
Come travel with me through my photographs and see what you find in God’s handwriting.
Along with the breathtaking wonder of the beauty I captured was the subtle but powerful exquisiteness of the beauty felt only with my senses. Feeling the embrace of a warm breeze, the comfort of an intoxicating fragrance, or the sheer Joy in hearing the song of a blue bird.
Not to mention the sweetness of the season’s first strawberries on my tongue or the silky softness of Shalom’s fur.
“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”
Stop. Breathe. Notice. Yes.
Rediscovering Beauty and being rediscovered by Beauty. Everything shifted from the gray of despair to the color of Hope. For as I read God’s handwriting in the beauty around me, He covered my wounded places with the balm of His truth.
Yes, just as He crafted the beauty I captured; He crafted me. He sustains His creation and will one day redeem it.
And all the gray and broken places in my life will be redeemed too.
Beauty heals, restores, speaks Hope. Beauty gives grace where we saw none, gives light in the darkness. Gives hope in the desperate places.
Even in the dark places, we can find beauty of we remember when something is buried, something beautiful will grow.
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