Category Archives: Beauty and God

Apr13

Stunned and Gobsmacked, or, God Must Be Right and I Must Be Wrong.

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Maybe I’m doing better with God than I think I am. I’ve always thought it impossible for me to please God regardless of what I do, say, or think. I realize I’m probably seeing God through the lens of Harry. I wish I could just take the Harry-glasses off and break them into a million pieces and be done with them for good so I can see God as He truly is, but such is not to be, it seems, at least not yet.

But maybe I’m not doing as badly as I think I am. The Bible says,

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. ~ Hebrews 11:6, NKJV.

Throughout my Christian life my greatest strivings and highest longings have always been to know God and to please Him, but doing that very thing is what has always caused me the greatest anguish, because I’ve felt the most hopeless about being able to do so. But the interesting thing was that in all my struggles and strivings I never stopped believing in God. I always believed that He existed, I always believed that His Word was true, even if I couldn’t believe it was true for me, though I desperately wanted to believe that it was.

If I’ve always believed, and never doubted, that God is, as it says in Hebrews 11:6; in other words, that He exists, seems to me that requires faith. Maybe even a lot of it, given the kinds of experiences I’ve lived through.

The Bible gives the definition of faith as,

Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. ~ Hebrews 11:1, NLT.

So maybe I do have faith, possibly even a lot of it. I’ve been seeking God diligently my whole Christian life, regardless of any memories that were niggling in the background, or that were surfacing, or whatever. It feels scary for me to say that as a statement of fact, even arrogant. There’s a big part of me that wants to qualify it so my faith looks in some way less, but I don’t think I’ll do that, as uncomfortable as not doing so makes me feel.

But maybe God sees me differently than I do. I mean, the Bible says,

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. ~ Isaiah 55:8-9, ESV.

So maybe the way God sees me is completely different than the way I see myself, and more importantly, the way Harry portrayed me. The Bible says God created me in His image and after His likeness (see Genesis 1:26). I really like the way that sounds, because God doesn’t create anything ugly or defective or junky. He only makes beautiful things, and I finally figured out that God thinks I’m beautiful.

When I realized that I was utterly stunned and gobsmacked. God sees me as beautiful? Wow!! And God doesn’t make mistakes, so He must be right.

I think I’ll believe Him. He’s smarter than I am.

Which brings me back to whether I have faith or not. I must, if I’m choosing to believe what God thinks about me rather than what I feel about myself.

How cool is that!

 

Apr6

Secret’s Delight

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I’ve been wanting to write something, anything, for several days, but the words have eluded me, nasty things. They’ve been just beyond my grasp.

As if words were living things…

Which they’re not, but they feel alive when I can’t find them to get them down on paper. They’re certainly alive in my mind at least.

It’s frustrating when I can’t write, because it feels like the words are trapped inside with no way out. Kind of like me throughout my childhood. In fact, when I was multiple I had an alter whose name was Secret who kept me from writing. It was her job to keep things secret and hidden from me, and I almost always found it extremely difficult to write because of her activity inside. She kept the words hidden behind blank thoughts and clouded minds; in other words, general confusion ~ something I experienced a lot of back then.

Thankfully, since God integrated me in 2003, the confusion is almost completely gone, and lately, I’ve been able to write almost prolifically ~ at least prolifically for me, if the number of entries here is any indication. I haven’t been able to write poetry, which is disappointing, but hopefully that will come with time.

I love writing poetry. It makes me feel free. There’s something about being able to write like that, even though it’s highly structured (I like writing poetry that rhymes), that makes me feel brilliant and uninhibited.

Maybe that sounds a little arrogant because I said that something makes me feel brilliant. Let me explain. Poetry is something that’s fairly new for me. Most of my life I couldn’t make sense of poetry, much less write it. It was a complete mystery to me. Then in September of 1989 I went on a retreat with other abuse victims, and while I was there I met a couple of women who were survivors of Satanic Ritual Abuse.

As they were talking about their experiences, what they were saying resonated with me, and I began to wonder if SRA was a part of my background. The thought of it terrified and horrified me. What I’d already remembered was appalling and shocking. To think that the adults in my life, who I was supposed to be able to trust, were guilty of such heinous crimes was beyond my comprehension, much less that they could be guilty of the kinds of crimes that were perpetrated on children by people in satanic cults.

So I came home from that retreat and wrote my first poem. It was called, prosaically enough, My First Pome. It wasn’t very good, but it was a start, and given that I’d never written anything remotely like that before, I think it was incredible. Here it is:

My First Pome

 I want to write poetical,

                             but how do I start?

The words are tangled up

and trapped in my heart.

If I open the door

they’ll come tumbling out,

Jumbled up letters

through an itty-bit spout.

I wrote that on October 1, 1989, and I’ve been able to write poetry ever since. Also, interestingly, I’ve been able to understand others’ poetry as well, something that just thrills me. Back in 2010 I was able to take a writing class at UC Irvine where we had to write a paper on T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets. We each had to pick one of the four quartets, and write a paper on the role of time in that quartet. And I was able to complete the assignment! In fact, I discovered things in the poem that the professor hadn’t seen! How cool is that? God is so good! I had so much fun writing that paper!

So that’s my poetry-writing history. I haven’t been able to write any poetry for awhile, but I don’t expect the gift God gave me has gone away for good. I don’t know what’s blocking it, but if it’s like the rest of my writing, I’m hoping it’ll come back once the block has been removed. I’m hoping God will show me what’s blocking it and help me get it back.

Nov27

A Hope Deferred, and a Decision Made.

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A long time ago, many, many years, in fact, I wanted to be a doctor. That’s all I ever wanted to do from the time I was ten years old. And my grandmother encouraged me in that desire because she bought me these marvelous books of medical illustrations by this guy named Frank Netter, who was a physician, but he was also an artist who specialized in doing beautiful and highly technical medical illustrations.

Frank Netter is dead right now. He died in 1991. But they’re still using his books of medical illustrations.

Unfortunately, the realities of my life, kept me from fulfilling that dream, (the abuse I suffered as a child made it so I’m not able to handle much in the way of stress, and medical school is very stressful), and I never even got accepted to medical school. I took the MCAT ~ and did poorly ~ and I applied to one school, but I wasn’t accepted, I’m sure because my MCAT scores were too low. My GPA from UCI was good, 3.46, but it probably wasn’t good enough.

It was a crushing blow, because, as I said, that’s the only thing I’d ever wanted to do with my life.

That was over thirty years ago, back in the mid-’80’s, and to this day, I still don’t know what God wants me to be when I grow up. Once I lost that dream I was never able to find another. I tried music for about a year, but couldn’t stomach the idea of having to practice for hours at a time. I thought about being a therapist, but at my age, graduate school ~ plus the years and years of collecting hours for licensure ~ feels impossible.

I still might consider it, however.

I’ve thought of art, but not as a career.

I just can’t seem to find anything that suits me enough that I’m willing to put forth the time and effort necessary to make a career out of it.

I guess, more than anything, that makes me feel like an extraordinarily lazy person.

Harrumph!!

I do like to write, and I think I’m fairly good at it, but I don’t know if I’m good enough to be able to make a living at it. I’ve been told that my poetry is publishable. I’ve also been told that I should write and publish my story, because God has worked miracles in my life, and He’s set me free from a lot of my abusive childhood, and He’s continuing to heal me from the rest of it. I thank God for that. I’m just not sure if I’d be able to do a proper job of putting it in written form so people would want to read it.

Publishing my poetry doesn’t feel too intimidating because it’s already written, so all that would be needed is to find someone to publish it. Writing my story is another matter. That feels completely daunting to me, because, not only would I have to write it, but I’d have find someone to publish it, and I don’t really know how to do either one.

Maybe I should just do it and let God worry about the rest. If I’m doing what He wants me to do, then how it gets done is really His problem, isn’t it?

Yup, it is!

Maybe I should take a creative writing class with an emphasis in writing a memoir. That might help get me started.

Now I just have to figure out where such a class might be located…

Aug7

God’s Definition of Good

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What is God’s definition of good?

Someone asked that question on the radio recently, and it really made me think, mostly because I’m just about positive God’s definition is different than man’s.

The Bible says,

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” ~ Isaiah 55:8-9, ESV.

What that tells me is that God sees things differently than we do. In addition, God is completely good, and we are the antithesis of good. The Bible says our righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). All of which makes sense, because we’re separated from God as a result of our sin ~ and as a result of Adam and Eve’s original sin ~ thus necessitating the need for a savior. Which is why Jesus Christ came and died on the cross ~ to atone once for all for our rebellion, and pay the ransom to remove the wall of separation between us and God.

Humans may have good parts; we may do good deeds. But bottom line, we are an evil lot, and without Jesus Christ’s saving work on the cross we would have no hope of anything other than eternity in Hell.

So God, and of course Christ, are wholly other than humanity, completely separate.

With all of that said, good from God’s point of view might be seen as that which is morally pure, just, and right, and also truthful ~ in the way that Jesus is the Truth (John 14:6, Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” ~ NKJV). I capitalized Truth because it’s not the kind of truth you see in today’s culture, with moral relativism and relative truth. It’s the absolute Truth that’s found in God’s Word, and that’s embodied in Jesus Christ.

I think the concept of good is also seen in everything that’s beautiful. The Bible says,

Oh, worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness! Tremble before Him, all the earth. ~ Psalm 96:8, NKJV.

Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. ~ Psalm 29:2, NKJV.

Not only are God and His holiness beautiful, but His creation is beautiful as well, and the world He created is chock-full of examples. In fact, His Word says that evidence of His existence can be clearly seen in His creation. It says in the book of Romans,

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made they can clearly see His invisible qualities ~ His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. ~ Romans 1:20, NLT.

I also think God sees suffering as good, even beautiful, as paradoxical as that may sound. Jesus’ work of salvation on the cross was the best possible good that any person could have done for humanity throughout all of eternity, and yet the agony He suffered ~ physically, emotionally, and spiritually ~ was probably as much suffering as any person has ever had to go through.

He bore the sin of the whole world in His body, and worst of all, He had to endure God’s abandonment, because God cannot look on sin, so while Jesus hung on the cross God had to turn His back on Jesus. That must have been the most agonizingly painful suffering of all for Him, and He showed it with His words,

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means,” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ~ Mark 15:34, ESV.

When Jesus uttered that anguished cry He was actually quoting Psalm 22:1,

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? ~ Psalm 22:1, NIV.

Another detail of Christi’s suffering that I remembered as I was writing this post is that He actually benefitted from it as well, as everyone else did, something that I’ve never understood very well. It says in Hebrews,

While Jesus was here on earth, He offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the One who could rescue Him from death. And God heard His prayers because of His deep reverence for God. Even though Jesus was God’s Son, He learned obedience from the things He suffered. ~ Hebrews 5:7-8, NLT.

That idea has always puzzled me. Why would Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have to learn to be obedient before He could go to the cross? Maybe it was because He was human as well as divine, and the human part had to learn obedience. That makes sense to me. That I can understand.

Curiouser and more wonderful too!

His humanity taught His divinity what it meant to suffer, and how hard it was for humans to be obedient in the process.

Maybe that’s why He makes such a good High Priest!

I like to think so…

May27

Beauty Shouts of God’s Existence…

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Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. ~ Psalm 29:2, NKJV.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. ~ Psalm 19:1, NKJV.

I’ve been fascinated by all aspects of beauty for a long time, especially with regard to Christian apologetics and the existence of God.

God’s creation is awash with examples of beauty that He’s created to give us reasons to worship Him, from the microscopic to the hugely macroscopic in outer space. There’s even a nebula that’s shaped like a horsehead! How cool is that?

Horsehead

And then there are diatoms. Diatoms are tiny, microscopic, one-celled organisms that have a glass (silica) shell, and there are about 250,000 different species, each with a different shell. They’re kind of like snowflakes, because no two are alike, and they’re all amazingly beautiful. Here are some examples:

Different Kinds of Diatoms

And there are things like the beautiful symmetry of the hemoglobin molecule, and the almost identical symmetry of the chlorophyll molecule, and considering the roles those two molecules play in the biochemistry of plants and animals, it just shows how wonderful and amazing God is.

The hemoglobin molecule:

Heme b of the Hemoglobin Molecule

The chlorophyll molecule:

Chlorophyll_f.svg

And then there are fractals, and the many fractal designs that can be found in nature.

An aloe plant:

Aloe Spiral Fractal

Mathematics is another example, with the Fibonacci sequence being a good illustration of the beauty to be found therein. The Fibonacci sequence is a series of integers characterized by the fact that every number after the first two is the sum of the two preceding ones: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, . . . A gorgeous example in nature of the Fibonacci sequence is the chambered Nautilus:

Nautilus With Connections Between Chambers

And aside from all the other examples that can be found in nature, God created human beings with the ability to perceive and appreciate beauty, as well as create beautiful things. He constructed our bodies with five senses, each of which can perceive a different kind of beauty.

Our ears can hear beautiful music, as well as a baby’s first words. Our taste buds can taste the most amazing desserts. Our noses can smell the scent of the sweetest flower, and the most fragrant perfume. Our hands can feel the softness of a baby’s skin. And with our eyes we can see the richness of color in a beautiful Van Gogh painting, or a vivid Hawaiian sunset.

All of that is to say that God has given us clear evidence of His existence through His creation, and, I believe, specifically through the beauty in His creation. It says as much in the book of Romans:

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. ~ Romans 1:20, NLT.