Mukilteo Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

Someone wrote: “What is this life if so full of care, we have no time to sit and stare.” We usually keep ourselves so busy and distracted that we fail to savor the moment and appreciate the beauty around us. I read somewhere that the average visitor to the Grand Canyon spends an average of four hours there, but only 20 minutes actually looking at the phenomenal gorge. The rest of the time they spend in the gift shop!

I guess if there is one good thing that has come from COVID-19, it is that many of us have been “forced” to sit and stare and to realize anew just how just how wonderfully beautiful the world can be. I have enjoyed my garden this season more than at any other time in my life. The colors of the flowers on my patio have taken on a new kind of radiance. I have taken a great deal of pleasure in watching the rabbits scamper around my backyard. Sunsets seem more spectacular.

As a person of faith, I believe that incredible beauty we see all around us speaks volumes of God’s majesty and glory. Psalm 19 in the Bible begins, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim, his handiwork.” The reformer John Calvin spoke of creation as “this dazzling theatre.” He wrote: “Wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory . . . There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.”

In spite of all the trauma and the suffering and the negativity in our world today, God still rules and beauty surrounds us. All we have to do is stop and open our eyes.

Even as I write this, Louis Armstrong’s famous son comes to mind:

I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom, for me and you

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world!