God has made everything beautiful…
What God has made is not apparent to the ignorant material senses looking for God’s creation in matter and not finding it there. But the wise look beyond matter, to Spirit, and find the beauty of God all around.
Spirit is beautiful. Spiritual creation is beautiful!! What God created is beautiful!
Look to Spirit for evidence, and you’ll find it.
Thank you, Evan. This is a link to an article from August 2024 which has been highlighted in the CS Sentinel. It is deserving of another look and carries a similar message as your blog.
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/gi6qg454mi?s=copylink
Thank you so much Cheryl.. truly helpful ..Bx
Thank you, Cheryl, for the link!
A perfect article to complement Evan’s blog – thank you for sharing it Cheryl!
Article very helpful, thank you Cheryl.
Thank you for this Evan. Appreciation for everything in our lives in a spiritual (Soul ) way is a good starter to shut the door on material sense. It helps promote inner peace which in turn leaves us open to Gods inspiration . Love it❣️
A thank you note to God
SUNSHINE
Spirit
Utilizes
Newness
Showing
Heavenly
Integrity
Needed
Everywhere
Wrote yesterday.
Thanks Evan for our daily
view of Spirit
Dear God, how glorious is Thy name / Through all the earth and sea and sky. / The wondrous heavens, Thy handiwork, / The moon and stars hast Thou ordained.
Such tender beauty, Lord, from Thee / Is shed abroad o’er all the earth; / In bird, in sunbeam, light and flower / Thy grace and goodness may be seen.
For this Thy gift unspeakable, / The beauty of Love’s holiness, / We lift our hearts in grateful song / And would be always praising Thee.
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 45:1–3)
The Loveliness of LOVE is all around …
Beauty is in the details of Life. Love is seeing these details and enjoying
them for all of their loveliness. God/Love created them to be expressed
and seen.
Beautiful ideas beget more beautiful ideas so let’s keep thought open to see only beautiful ideas of Soul.
Great article, thank you all
Interesting what you said Evan, about material sense looking for God’s creation in matter and not finding it there. Made me think of a song from a while back called ‘Lookin For Love in All the Wrong Places.’ Yes we’re all looking for Peace, Truth, God, but let’s look where these actually are by seeing with Spiritual Sense.
Also what you said about finding the beauty of God all around. Back when my daughter was in college she’d call home and sometimes talk about different struggles and challenges she was seeming to experience. I would often suggest that she look and see that God was everywhere, all around her, right there, where it looked like there was an absence of good, to look with an open thought to see it. I didn’t know the term Spiritual Sense back then, but that’s what I was really saying.
How beautiful .. the Soul of Spirit is all around us. Sometimes opening our
eyes to see it, is the challenging part. It is like waking from a dream, like I
did this morning, that was a struggle, and so ridiculous with everything and
glad I awoke from it and it wasn’t true! … to seeing the sun shining, birds
happily coming to the feeder, (such expressions of joy), even a sweet little
red squirrel, lots of flowers just waiting to bloom which are still dormant,
but in thought, are so lovely, colorful and cheery.
God’s world IS Beautiful! Being here with all of the inspiration of these
marvelous and helpful thoughts is a treasure to love and appreciate.
Thankyou Evan, Beautiful thought for today,
The Scripture from ISAIAH 52 -7 Came to me.
How Beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, the publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion Thy GOD reigneth. Thankyou everyone for you Beautiful inspirational thoughts.
Thank you Evan, and love all the comments. A reader posted this article awhile ago, but it’s worth a re-read. And it will be new to you if you are new to SV. 🙂
‘You are God’s rose’ by Elizabeth Wiggins, from the March 28, 2013 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel:
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/mcpvhdf0w8?s=copylink
Wow. Thank you, J. I don’t remember reading this article before. It is so clear! I’m very grateful for your post and for all the comments, poems, and hymns shared here today. (I will not look at God’s “rose” in the same old way again.)
Thank you Evan,
Just the clarity I needed for today.
I love what’s been shared. Some time ago the Sentinel shared this Bible Lens explanation of “beautiful” as used in Eccl.3:11 — “Sources view “beautiful” in this verse as portraying perfect placement—every act and event in harmony with God’s entire creation.”
Wonderful! Thank you, Barb. ♥️
this is where I get confused…. when people express finding God in the natural world. Do we need to look for beauty in material things? Or just look for Spiritual quality in things? just a bit confusing to me!
Deb, I also wonder about this sometimes. I was thinking about it just today when I looked out the window and saw in the distance a bunch of leafless trees and blue sky behind. This simple beauty stopped me in my tracks. I recognized that I was responding to the qualities expressed such as harmony, balance, stillness, order. So maybe it’s the feelings and qualities evoked and not the things themselves.
nice, thank you
Deb, this article might be helpful. It is from a 1917 article: “Reality versus the Counterfeit.” Evan has talked about the “counterfeit” universe and if I recall correctly what he has said, I believe he likens it to a pale concept of what is real. (If I am incorrect, I hope Evan steps in here to correct what I have said.)
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/1xoahsvg25i?s=copylink
Good article Thank you Cheryl! Yes, don’t study the darkness if you want to be in the light. One can spend much time studying the darkness since the media is full of it and sometimes so is our experience. However we need to condemn and expose it, not hide it nor cover it up saying “Evil is unreal” since “Evil uncondemned is undenied and nurtured” — MBE S&H.
And thank you Evan for this post and the one on Love on March 7th especially!
Good question Deb. This was helpful to me when I read it in an article from “The Mind of Christ” by Hilda Mabel Sayers, from the April 3, 1978 issue of The Christian Science Sentinel, where she says:
“Many years ago I was walking one day through a lovely English woodland, carpeted with large primroses and violets. As I paused to look at the upturned faces of these flowers, I questioned: How is it that I see them as so beautiful and perfect? Immediately the answer came: It is because of the purity I see in them. These flowers are symbols of beautiful, pure thoughts of the one Mind, God. They are reminders to me to acknowledge the one infinite Mind controlling all in perfect harmony.”
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/1fw27c15fyg?s=copylink
Hi Deb – This is what Mrs. Eddy says about it”
Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immortal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phenomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always erroneous.
Is Spirit the source or creator of matter? Science reveals nothing in Spirit out of which to create matter. Divine metaphysics explains away matter. Spirit is the only substance and consciousness recognized by divine Science.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 277:29–5)
had not read that, thank you
Thank you, Evan! I so needed this right now as I’ve been looking all around me and seeing “dead brown” everything, winter’s landscape is SO bleak! I have been trying to see the beauty in matter which just makes no sense anymore. I used to be able to convince myself that a winter landscape was beautiful “in it’s own way” eg. sculptural, contrasting shadows and light, etc. but now it just looks ugly, dead and lifeless. I know that is false belief asking for an upgrade! This week’s lesson is also helping me to understand why the things I hear right now also sound lifeless and rigid or annoying and ugly. I’m ready to give up the limited material perception for the spiritual truth that the ONLY life, Cause and effect is LOVE and that is Eternal. For by love alone is love awakened. Thanks for the lift! OXXO
Hi Jess and Deb–Dunno if this is on target, but this poem came to me about a year ago and I frequently reread it when disillusioned by the sense picture:
The Promise
The buds that sit there all winter long,
Looking forlorn and useless on each branch,
Are subtle, sturdy promises, signaling the future,
Reminding us to look beyond the stark, the leafless stick
Which otherwise is all defeat, gaunt and thin, bereft of life.
In time they will emerge from death (really just a sleep),
With cautious demonstration, evoking hope, replacing fear,
Demanding that we see and celebrate all life, permanent
And all renewing, always moving, always here, forever.
No matter how bleak, how cold, how dark and bare the time,
A warmth is secretly, persistently emerging, easy like the dawn.
The obstinate, unfair and inhospitable will yield;
Spring is unstoppable, inevitable.
A bud is not hope; it is a guarantee
Thank you, Dear Deb and Jess and Rose … it inspired me to ponder more
the seeming barrenness of the winter landscapes, too. The four seasons
do have a beauty all their own. Snow befalls on us a sort of pristine cleansing
of the drab, brown lifelessness. I love the gentleness of snowflakes falling,
the purity of freshly fallen snow, the quietness and beauty, like you mentioned,
Jess, of the shadows and light – all peaceful and teeming with life/Life/God’s
creation in a “thought”-full way. It might help, where Mrs. Eddy writes on pg.508
of S&H, ” Mortal sense inverts this [Creation’s] appearing and calls ideas material.
Thus misinterpreted, the divine [IDEA] seems to fall to the level of a human or
material belief, called mortal [man] … The only intelligence or substance of a
thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it. Mind is the Soul of all. Mind
is Life, Truth, and Love which governs all … ‘Genesis i. 12. And the earth brought
forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose
see was in itself, after his kind: and [GOD] saw that it was Good’. ”
I love the beautiful share below, William E. and MB, your share above about
Sunshine.
(oops, when posting, realized William E., your share is above …
and should be see d” above. Sorry for the typo.)
I love this conversation so far, thanks to Evan and all commenters.
For me, the challenge is to read the news headlines from this country and around the world, and see through the masks of unbeautiful, ungodlike qualities being expressed. That takes me to what Mary Baker Eddy writes on pages 476-7 of Science and Health, that Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man in God’s own likeness, pure and holy, right where a sinning mortal man appears to material sense.
Looking to Spirit for evidence of spiritual beauty in man gives me peace of Mind.
Dear Cheryl and J, thank you very much your very helpful articles. I experienced something similar when I stood on the seashore near Venice. It was a very beautiful sunset and I stood alone there admiring that beauty. And there I had a joyful and thankful feeling of Gods presence and expression of beauty and Love.
Thank you very much indeed, dear Evan for your very loving SpiritView “Spirit is beautiful. Spiritual creation is beautiful. What God creates is beautiful!” and therefore spiritual man, everybody, as God’s expression, is very beautiful!
When I watch a pretty sunset or sundawn, or the sweet birdies in my garden, I thank God for his creation of Love and beauty! ❤️