In the opening pages of Genesis, each day of creation ends with the common chorus “and God said it was good.” But did you know that the Hebrew word for “good” can also mean “beautiful?” In fact some of the earliest translations of the Hebrew to Greek read that way! This changes the tone dramatically. Where “good” can sound utilitarian in the context of our western culture, “beautiful” speaks to the centrality of something we far too infrequently consider in both our culture and in Christianity – beauty. A focus on beauty often gets treated as superfluous and even a distraction from pursuing God. But what if devaluing beauty actually hinders our relationship with a God whose very nature is beauty? Tonight we’ll wrestle with that questions as we start in Psalm 19 and then work our way through the Bible’s treatment of beauty – what it is, why we need it, and just how we walk in and contribute to the beauty all around us.
by City Life