Standard of Beauty

Yesterday, God blessed us with the most gorgeous of days - plenty of sun and 73 degrees. My sister, Kathryn, and I took our good friend, Chaos the dog, hiking at Sugar Hollow. The weather was absolutely perfect and there was an abundance of water flowing from the recent rain. We had a great time, but more than that, it gave me an opportunity to reflect on something that Kathryn said while we were there. Upon seeing this beautiful waterfall in the picture, she paused, gazing in awe. "You know what's amazing?" she said to me. "This water, the waterfall, the beauty, it all just exists. People didn't make it. The water doesn't care if nobody comes to see it. It will continue flowing, just being beautiful, and it has nothing to do with people."

At that moment, I once again saw the reality of God's glory crying out to me. To think that before people determined a standard of beauty, this existed. It was so easy to see the creation of God, in this one waterfall, this one stream. The water didn't care that we were there. I could almost hear the water crying out to God, oblivious to the fact that two humans on a Saturday afternoon also considered it beautiful. The only thing that it seemed concerned with was letting its Creator know just how glorious He is. Beauty existed long before people decided what was beautiful.

It reminds me of when Jesus marched to the Mount of Olives, and the people were crying out to him, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" The religious leaders told Jesus to make the people be quiet. And Jesus responded, "If they keep quiet, the very stones will cry out." (Luke 19:37-40)

Yesterday, standing before a waterfall whose very existence was to make more of God, the reality of that statement poured down on my heart.