Spring Beauty.

 “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” ― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that's all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.” 
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

"We do not want merely to see beauty….we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it."  C.S. Lewis

Saturday found me wandering in this sanctuary of a garden called The Grotto a mile up the road.  It sits on a cliff, looking out toward Washington…..surrounded by city life and busy roads…..but like an enormous, peaceful, hidden gem.  

At first, it rained, and I went undercover….spying a rainbow land right in the Columbia River for a long spell.  When it disappeared in the sunlight, I walked the garden. 

I thought about this magical wonderland God made and listened to the gospel proclaimed endlessly in my ear (thank you, Elyse Fitzpatrick). 

I thought about how this beauty grips us….and why?

I thought about how all beauty is from Him and of Him. 

And how He made us this way to worship….Him.

How unworthy we are, like the lowest citizens….wiping His feet with our tears….and getting it all wrong….and how He delights in us, a like a treasured possession….just inviting us in to sit with Him in all our weak moments.

And how one day all of it will be written on my heart forever. No more of the striving and the forgetting. Forever.

"The heavens declare the glory of the God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.  There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.  Their voice goes out into all the earth"  Ps 19:1-4

"Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.  Ps 96:6

"Every experience of beauty points us to infinity." -Balthasar