"The Search for Beauty"

I love to take pictures, especially in the summer in North Carolina. Flowers are everywhere, everything is green, butterflies are fluttering around and the beach is breathtaking. Nature is where I can go to see the beauty that God created, but during the winter time it is a little harder for me to find that beauty. For me, it is a lot easier to photograph nature in the summer. When winter rolls around, the flowers wilt, the grass turns brown, the trees lose their leaves, and it’s cold without the beauty of snow. I feel like there’s not much to photograph. This winter I bought a new camera so I decided to take a walk on a trail and try it out. I was struggling to find anything other than leafless trees to photograph and I was becoming really discouraged and frustrated. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” If this is true then why was I struggling so much to find any beauty? I was coming close to giving up and leaving when I felt God tell me that there was beauty right where I was but I just had to look a little harder to find it. I stopped walking and realized where I was: the trail had dumped me out onto a road that leads back to the parking lot. But when I looked forward I saw the beauty in the trees that lined the path, the painted lines on the road that led me to where I was going with the blue sky up above. Sure it wasn’t the beach, there wasn’t a butterfly or flowers around and the leaves weren’t full and green, but there was beauty in what was there at the time. God had opened my eyes to show me something that I had not seen before; he showed me that there was beauty in the season of winter, in the season of change, and becoming new.

In life, many times we go through situations that probably aren’t “beautiful.” We may be going through our own season of winter where life seems darker and duller than usual, but I believe that there is beauty to be found in every situation, sometimes we just need to look harder. Think about a caterpillar and the process that it goes through in order to become a butterfly. It goes through metamorphosis, a season of change and a time of being still. A time of change that we as humans go through, yet wouldn’t call beautiful ourselves. But this process is essential for the caterpillar to become a butterfly. When this process is over and the butterfly has broken through the chrysalis, we look at the butterflies and we see beauty. We tend to forget what that butterfly had just been through. It went through its own season of winter and a big dramatic change. The butterfly had to break through the hard protective covering all by itself to be able to get where it was now.

It is so important that while we are going through our own winter seasons that we look for beauty and we remind ourselves of the things that make us happy. Psalm 27:4 reads, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” The most important place to look for beauty is in God. In Him, there is no darkness, dullness, or lack of anything. He is perfect and He is love. God is everything that we will ever need on this earth, and He is the provider of it all. Seek out God by reading His word and spending time with him. Ask Him to show you the beauty in your life and prepare your heart to see the things He wants to show you. We can ask Him to open our eyes and show us the beauty in life right where we are and He will, just like He did for me that day on the trail.

Finding beauty isn’t always easy to do, and at times beauty isn’t easy to find. I like to train my mind to search for the beauty and that day on the trail is what I’m reminded of when I’m going through my own season of winter. When I go out into nature and physically find beauty, it reminds me that my life is similar to nature. Constantly changing, but beautiful. And when God looks at me, He sees beauty in who He created me to be. I’m reminded that even though what I’m going through may not seem beautiful at the time, that doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty in the process or in the end result. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 says, “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” We can have full confidence in who God is creating us to be and have faith in His plan. No matter the season, there is always beauty in God’s glory.