An Eye for Beauty?

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to start doing a walk/run in the early mornings.  I knew I needed to add more exercise as part of my life, and after a conversation with a friend of mine, who is an avid runner, I felt myself getting motivated to try it again.

The mornings are SO gorgeous right now. Warm, but usually with a hint of a chill.  The sun is usually up, but not fully, when I leave the house. 

I take along my phone and earphones and I listen to sermons or music or podcasts during my walk/run. (I put the / in between there because I run part of the time and walk when I get too tired!)

Ready to leave one morning...

Anyway, as I would run, I started to look for pretty things to take pictures of.  I have my phone with me anyway, so stopping to snap a picture with Instragram doesn't take too long.  I became a hunter of beauty...scouring the ditches for pretty flowers, mostly.

I think that this is a wild morning glory.

There are lots of these bee balms blooming right now.

I'm not sure what kind these are? Maybe someone else knows.  But they are a rich yellow color and kind of remind me of a big buttercup.

We have lots and lots of wild raspberries that are ready for picking right now.

There are only so many flowers to photograph and I am not a good photographer by any stretch of the imagination, so I started looking around a little more, beyond the ditches to the trees and the sky.

One morning, it was foggy and the sun was shrouded in fog that it hadn't yet burned off.  As I ran towards it, I was struck by the beauty.

I decided to snap a few pictures and I was totally delighted with the result.

The funny part is, I took these pictures in full color and didn't make them black and white or sepia. I guess that this is just how the camera captured them in that lighting.  (This is part of the dirt road that we live along...where I do my walk/run.)

Just a closer up of the bird house.  I thought it looked really beautiful.

This was yesterday morning.  That little white speck in the middle of the picture is the remains of the moon that was still visible.

Our dog Stuey waits by the front door for me now and excitedly gets up and heads out with me on my walk.  It didn't take him long to learn my routine.  (you can see him up ahead on this picture -- Just a brown dot)

A grove of birch trees.  I always think that their white trunks are so pretty. Especially when there is a group of them together.

So yesterday I had snapped a few of these pictures and I got to thinking about what defines beauty?  I could say that I am a "seeker of beauty" in these walks...that I am looking for pretty things that catch my eye to photograph and share with others.

And that is good.

But who says what is beautiful and what is not?

There is a deeper something at work here. Because don't we all live our lives that way to a certain extent?

We want to categorize things as beautiful or ugly.  (Even in nature)

Even in people.

We call things good or bad that God brings into our lives.

We turn ourselves in judgers who decide whether something is beautiful and good or not.

I know that God placed within us that desire for beauty.  The appreciation of things that are lovely. So it can't be a bad thing.

But, like everything else in this world, the devil loves to use things that God placed within us for good to his evil advantage.

If he can distort our love of beauty into us categorizing things are "beautiful" or "ugly" and as "good" or "bad", even though we know that God is all good and doesn't bring anything ugly or bad into our lives, then the devil can catch us in the trap of discounting and maybe even resenting any of the so-called ugliness that comes into our lives.

You have a relationship difficulty to work through?  Ugly.

A child who is going through a rough time?  Bad.

An illness of a loved one?  Wrong.

And while I am not saying that any of these things are fun or that we should/would wish these things upon ourselves or anyone else, there is a beauty that comes from these "ashes" if we allow our hearts to be thankful and if we acknowledge God even in difficulties. 

I cannot completely describe the span of my thoughts on this.  I feel like this is something I am just learning about and that there would be so much more to write if I could get it down in a way that made sense.

It feels a little suffocated inside of me right now and maybe its because I am just trying to process this all myself. It is a big subject. 

But I think within it lies a secret that I want to get to the bottom of.

So...I took a couple of pictures of things that I wouldn't have normally photographed.

Because I would categorize them as more ugly than beautiful.

Shriveled up and dying daisies.

Clover that is mostly dried up and brown.

My shadow in the morning sunlight...in which I look shapeless and somewhat large!

I guess part of my challenge to myself is to take the second glance.  To look beneath the surface of what appears to be ugly and see the hand of God in it.  To choose to open my mind and my heart.  To even be thankful for that which appears to be less than beautiful.

And we're not just talking about flowers here.

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