“Eyes to See”

by Dan Bouchelle

Not long ago I was driving west through Oklahoma on the way to Amarillo, Texas. If you have ever taken I-40 west out of Oklahoma City, you know that it is no lush, fruitful panorama that envelops you. You can go mile after mile without seeing a single tree. There isn’t even much cultivated land. When digging in your vocabulary trunk for words to describe such surroundings you are likely to keep pulling up “barren,” “ugly,” “dead,” “wasteland,” and “desert.”

Some parts of the world wear their beauty on their sleeve for everyone to see. Some people are tempted to think that places that don’t shout beauty can’t even speak the language. But people who are patient, and who have eyes to see it, discover that there is beauty everywhere in God’s creation.

As the day wore down on my trip, the setting sun gave off a glorious display that no one ever sees in a forest of trees. It showered my van with beams of gold, orange, and red so rich and full they defy description. You can live many a year in less barren areas and never see the magnificent burning plains sunsets we see almost every day. Folks from other areas rarely experience the awesome feeling of being able to gaze across thirty miles of rolling hills and feel their own smallness as they scratch their way across the vast and unending terrain. How often do they get to watch the graceful grass bowing before the wind as God blows gently across our world, reminding us that there are things, powerful things, at work in our world beyond our ability to see?

Look anywhere in this world God has made and you will see that in some way it beautifully declares the glory of God. Some parts declare it in shouts of joy and others in gentle, teasing whispers. But nothing that God has made can be altogether devoid of beauty.

People are like that, too, for God is the Maker of us all, and we are all made in his image. Some people’s beauty shouts to us; other people’s beauty is more coy and demure, awaiting the patient eye and the discerning spirit to become apparent, all the more rich and full, more striking and profound, than the beauty which is obvious. God has never made an ugly person devoid of the spark of the divine. God is no fool nor is he a slipshod workman. His creative power knows no off days or shoddy work. Rather, he crafts varieties of beauty that we might learn to appreciate it all, wonder at the mystery of his glory, and bow before him in adoring worship.