General Superintendent
Max Edwards
April 30, 2024
Beauty. As you know, it has been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That is certainly true in the larger sense. Some things are more beautiful to some people than others. To an avid bass angler, a 10lb large-mouth bass mounted on the wall is beautiful. To another, it might not be very attractive at all. In like fashion, some might strongly feel that a particular piece of music is beautiful, while others might find that same piece to be boring or even distasteful.
But it seems to me that some things have an almost universal sense of beauty. The natural world is often chock-full of nearly breathtaking vistas that most people would describe as gorgeous. God’s handiwork on display often brings a smile to our faces, and peace to our hearts, and I believe is a testimony to the glory and splendor of our omnipotent FATHER GOD.
I have had a few encounters with that kind of worship-inspiring beauty over the last couple of weeks. The recent solar eclipse found Judy and me directly in the path of totality on April 8th. With our limited equipment, we weren’t able to capture any spectacular pictures though I did save this one of the crescent sun.
One of our local Indianapolis TV news stations shared this picture of the total blackout. It was an amazing, and beautiful encounter that we won’t soon forget.
One week later, I had the joy of being in the Yosemite Valley, and took this picture of El Capitan! The entire valley is spectacular, with waterfalls, and rock face walls thousands of feet high. Beautiful!
Then last week, while attending the NC Journey meeting, we were treated to some amazing views on the edges of some of the local waterways. I captured these two photographs of the same sunset, just a few minutes apart:
The poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson aptly wrote:
“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky …”